
If you want to heal emotionally, you have to focus on what you’re doing now, not what happened in the past. It’s, of course, important to speak about your past and get clear on some of your why, but the big mistake I find clients making is that they just want to keep talking about their childhood or a bad breakup and not focus on what they can do now. Talking about your past won’t heal you. Taking action will. But you need to take the right action. You heal yourself emotionally by getting good at three components: 1) Learning self-regulation, 2) Making mindfulness a habit, and 3) Practicing self-acceptance/self-compassion. The trick is that you need to do these in that order. Too many people are trying to practice self-acceptance, but they haven’t had any experience in self-regulation or mindfulness. It’s then incredibly hard to work on your self-compassion or acceptance, so you give up! Last week, in episode 316, we went all in on self-regulation. This week, you’ll learn to master mindfulness and self-acceptance/self-compassion. Let’s dive in.
16-minute read
Part 1: Making Mindfulness a Habit
Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment without judgment. It’s about observing your thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise and letting them pass without attaching to them. Mindfulness is the foundation of emotional healing because it teaches you how to create space between your thoughts and your reactions.
Let me explain this with a real-life scenario. You’re out with your partner running errands. The day has been going fine, but there’s a lot to do, and your mind is consumed “with all the things.” One of your goals for today is to buy a home security system. The good news is that you and your partner have already done all the research and decided on the best fit for your needs, so you just need to get it and go.
You’ve made it to your local hardware or Home Depot type store, and there it is on the shelf. However, your partner is now having second thoughts and isn’t ready to commit. They want to go over the different systems again. Your patience is waning as you see that this is taking way longer than you allotted time for, and you’ve got about 10 other things you want to get done this morning that are way more important in your view (or at least as important and now you won’t have time for them).
This is starting to feel like a waste of time, and it’s all your partner’s fault. You start thinking: “He always does this. We decide on something, and then we end up reexamining and wasting time. Why can’t he ever make a decision and just stick to it? Why does it always have to be such a big thing? All the talking and the research! Just decide already – I’ve got more important things to do!”
You’re feeling anxious, resentful, and a little overwhelmed now as you think of the rest of your day. You don’t say all these things (at first) and don’t even notice that you’re thinking all these thoughts or having these feelings. But soon your impatience grows, and maybe you start with the heavy sigh or the helpful “I think the first one is great” or “That second one you like sounds perfect- let’s get that” in your efforts to move things along.
Your partner doesn’t budge and continues to ask questions and is now trying to find “the guy” at Home Depot who can help (good luck there). You finally snap, “Just get the first one! We don’t have time for this! Why do you always make such a big production of everything? You always make these simple things hard!”
You can imagine what ensues after that – a lovely fight that lingers for most of the day. Let’s take a moment to dissect what really happened.
Future Tripping and Past Tripping
What really happened is that you weren’t in your moment. You were “future tripping” as you thought about all the things you had to get done today. You started imagining what wouldn’t happen and what you’d need to rearrange. You were predicting more stress for yourself later due to the current outing taking longer than you anticipated.
What was also happening is that you were “past tripping.” Whenever you use words like “always” or “never,” you’re thinking about your partner’s past behaviors. You know deep down that it’s not OK to use words like “always or never” because they’re not true. However, in the moment, it’s easy to go there.
The big problem with this whole scenario is that you were allowing your mind to wander to the future or to the past. You start thinking of these things and these thoughts evoke certain feelings because you feel the way you think. These types of thinking patterns and ensuing fights are incredibly common, but they don’t have to be. There’s a simple answer to stop all this, and that’s to be in your moment with what’s currently happening, as much as possible, instead of in the future or the past.
The Answer is to Be Mindful
When you’re in your moment, otherwise known as being mindful, you’re aware when these thoughts and feelings arise, and you can stop them! You get off of autopilot and into what’s real in the here and now. When you’re mindful, you’re aware of what you’re thinking, so you don’t let your thoughts and feelings blindly drive your actions and behaviors.
Mindfulness is seriously a superpower. It helps you stay in the moment so you can avoid conflicts and misunderstandings, create more happiness and contentment in your life in general, and create more intimate and connected relationships. When you’re being mindful, you’ll be able to act, not react. You’re going to notice that you’re having negative or unhealthy thoughts and becoming impatient. You can then tell yourself something different about the situation. You can step back and see what’s happening from a new stance.
A New Way of Thinking
A new way of thinking about the example I just gave could be, “I know my partner well, and this comes up whenever they’re anxious. I wonder what they’re really anxious about? I love this person and want to be supportive.” Going into the conversation with an intention of love and support and not of controlling a particular outcome will yield very different results!
Now you can say something like, “Hey Hon, let’s stop for a minute. We discussed all this earlier and decided on X security camera. What’s happening now that you’re changing your mind and not trusting our earlier decision?” If your partner’s answer still seems muddled or confused about a decision, you can ask more questions to help problem-solve: “Tell me more about…”
You’re asking questions and, because you’re being mindful, your tone is patient and curious instead of accusatory, impatient, and annoyed! The conversation will go completely differently, and the rest of your day will progress differently too. These kinds of questions make the other person feel heard, important and appreciated, all the things that add up to a satisfying and connected relationship.
But I think the most powerful and important thing that comes from being mindful is how you’ll feel about yourself. It feels so good to be in charge of you! Instead of saying things like, “I can’t help how I feel” or “I can’t stop being angry/sad/insert sucky feeling here,” you can get in front and stop the automatic responses.
Why Mindfulness Will Make Your Life Awesome!
Mindfulness has been extensively researched, and studies show in a multitude of ways its effectiveness in reducing many mental health symptoms, including stress, loneliness, rumination, anxiety, and depression. And mindfulness also enhances your physical health. Research shows it can lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, and even improve sleep quality.
So, there’s a ton of research, but I want to quickly mention four important ones here to keep you motivated to really do this mindfulness thing:
- Mindfulness decreases emotional reactivity. Basically, you’re able to act, not react, which is huge for being a better partner and person in the world. It allows you that “pause” button between some stimulus and your response.
- Mindfulness increases cognitive flexibility. This means that, in addition to being less reactive, you’re able to think better, problem-solve, and come up with better solutions. The research shows that it “neurologically disengages the automatic pathways that were created by prior learning and enables present-moment input to be integrated in a new way.” That’s a fancy way of saying you’ll be able to come up with new thoughts about things.
- Mindfulness creates greater relationship satisfaction. Empirical evidence shows that mindfulness protects against the emotionally stressful effects of conflicts in your relationship and helps you respond better to relationship stress overall, as it helps you communicate your emotions to your partner in a healthy way.
- When you’re mindful, you’ll remember to use all the great tools you learned! In those moments of stress and conflict, instead of going into autopilot, you’ll be able to stop and access what you learned to help your relationships.
Making Mindfulness a Habit
There’s one surefire way to make mindfulness a habit, and it’s pretty easy to do.
- Set a reminder on your phone to alert you 3x per day. I don’t care what the times are, but try to spread them out (maybe 9:00, 1:00 and 6:00).
- When you hear the alert, simply notice where your mind was. What were you thinking about?
- Gently bring your focus back to the present (as non-judgmentally as possible). Be kind to yourself and just bring your awareness back to the present moment.
- Set an intention for how you want to be moving forward in your day.
Do this for one week and you’ll start training your brain to look to be in your moments and mindful. It’s an excellent tool to do again any time you notice that you’re being reactive or having consistent negative thoughts or emotions.
I also want you to remember to incorporate mindfulness into your daily activities where you can. You could make it a habit to focus on mindfulness when you wash the dishes, walk your dog, or when you’re eating. Each time you can take a moment and use the SINGS method:
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- S: Stop what you’re doing.
- I: Inhale and exhale consciously for one breath.
- N: Notice what you were thinking about.
- G: Gently bring your attention back to the present.
- S: Set an intention for this next block of time or for your day.
Advanced Mindfulness Techniques
Once you’ve mastered basic mindfulness, you can explore advanced practices like:
- Body Scan Meditation: This involves focusing on each part of your body, from head to toe, noticing sensations, tension, or areas of relaxation. Body scan meditations are particularly helpful for reducing stress and enhancing physical awareness. I have a body scan recording in my Patreon community to go along with this episode!
- Mindful Journaling: Set aside 10 minutes a day to write about your thoughts and feelings. Journaling mindfully helps you process emotions and gain clarity.
- Mindfulness in Conflict: During a disagreement, pause to notice your body’s physical reactions (e.g., tension in your jaw, an upset tummy, or a racing heart). This awareness can help you respond rather than react, promoting healthier communication.
- Silent Retreats: If you’re ready for a deeper experience, consider attending a silent mindfulness retreat. These immersive experiences can provide profound insights and strengthen your practice.
Journaling Prompt: Exploring Emotional Triggers
Write about a recent situation where you felt triggered. What thoughts and emotions came up? How did your body react? Reflect on how practicing mindfulness might have changed your response. Again, I’ll have more journaling prompts in my Patreon community, but always want to deliver extra love here too!
Part 2: Practicing Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion
Once mindfulness becomes a habit, you’re ready to tackle self-acceptance and self-compassion. While these two concepts are closely related, they have slight differences. Self-acceptance is about acknowledging and embracing all parts of yourself, including your flaws and imperfections, without judgment. It’s an unconditional approval of who you are. Self-compassion, on the other hand, involves extending kindness and understanding to yourself, particularly during moments of struggle or failure. It’s about treating yourself as you would a dear friend. Together, they are the ultimate keys to emotional healing because they allow you to embrace who you are—flaws and all. Let’s start with talking about self-acceptance (and if you want to get more on this, check out my earlier episode:
What Is Self-Acceptance?
Self-acceptance means acknowledging and embracing all parts of yourself, even the ones you’re not proud of. It’s understanding that you are enough as you are, without needing to prove your worth.
Why Self-Acceptance Is Hard
Self-acceptance can be challenging because most of us have an inner critic that’s been running the show for years. This critic feeds on self-judgment and perfectionism, making it difficult to see your worth.
How to Practice Self-Acceptance: 2 Tips
Tip No. 1: Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Mark Twain famously said, “comparison is the death of joy,” and he’s backed by studies. We’ve now got a bunch of research showing that comparing yourself to others diminishes your self-confidence while making you more depressed and anxious. Whether you’re watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians, scrolling incessantly through social media, or talking to the other moms and wondering how they seem so together, it’s killing you and you’ve got to stop.
Tip No. 2: Keep Your Word to Yourself
When we don’t accept ourselves, we end up full of self-doubt. This results in changing our minds often, valuing others’ opinions more than our own and waffling. A way out of this cycle is to keep every commitment you make to yourself. If you start a home project but get halfway through and decide you don’t like the paint color, just finish the job as is. You can always change it another time. There was a reason you picked that color initially; just let that be enough.
Did you tell your friends you were going out on Saturday with them but now you feel too fat and don’t want to be seen in public? Put on your big girl pants (even if that’s literal) and get your gorgeous ass out the door.
Whenever you notice yourself doubting a decision you’ve made or not making a decision because you’re full of doubt about your judgment, stop, breathe, and see this for what it is: an opportunity for self-acceptance. You might mess it up. You might wish you’d painted the room green later, but it’s all about practicing this acceptance of all your decisions and starting to see that they’re all “right” in the moment.
The real key to self-acceptance is getting over the self-doubt, as I mentioned earlier. Somehow, some way, you need to understand that you’re doing the best you can with the tools you have and that this has always been true. So, when you made the decision to major in philosophy in college and now you regret it because you can’t find a job with your philosophy degree, don’t beat yourself up. When you made that choice back in the day, you were doing the best you could with the tools you had at that time.
Today, you’ve got new tools, so you’re able to think differently and make different choices. Don’t just accept yourself as you are, accept yourself as you were. The past is to learn from, not to live in. OK, time to jump into self-compassion.
Get my top five tips for overcoming insecurity and silencing your inner critic.
What Is Self-Compassion?
Self-compassion, as defined by Dr. Kristin Neff, involves treating yourself with the same kindness, concern, and support you would offer a close friend. It consists of three elements:
- Self-kindness: Being warm and understanding toward yourself.
- Common humanity: Recognizing that suffering is a shared human experience.
- Mindfulness: Observing negative thoughts and emotions without judgment.
Since we already chatted about mindfulness (you can see how these are all interconnected), I’m going to suggest one of Kristen Neff’s exercises to work on self-kindness and common humanity.
Order a daily reminder to show yourself some compassion!
Top Tip to Building Self-Compassion
Neff calls this tool Self-Compassion Breaks. They’re meant to remind us that we’re all human, we all make mistakes or struggle, and it’s human to judge ourselves.
Here’s How You Do It:
- Think of something that you’re struggling with right now or that’s causing you stress.
- As you think of it, see if you can feel where that discomfort or stress is in your body.
- Now say to yourself, “This is a moment of suffering,” or whatever feels more natural to you: “This sucks,” “This really hurts,” “This is stress I’m feeling.” (this is the mindful part)
- Next, say to yourself something like: “Lots of people have struggles in their lives,” or “I’m not the only one who feels this way,” or “I’m not alone in my life and how I feel,” or “It’s impossible to never have difficulties.”
- Now put your hands over your heart, cup the side of your face, give yourself a hug or any other kind of soothing touch that feels right to you (This is the common humanity component).
- Now, say to yourself: “May I be kind to myself,” or “May I forgive myself,” or “May I be patient” – whatever feels natural to you. (This is, obviously, the self-kindness part).
It’s great to take as many Self-Compassion breaks as you can throughout the day. My suggestion is to set a reminder for three times per day for the next three days to do these and see what kind of difference it makes in how you feel and where your attention goes.
In the end, the more you keep your heart open to yourself, the more love you have to give to others.
Journaling Prompt: Self-Compassion Reflection
And because I love you so much, here’s a journaling prompt that might help also: Think about a recent time you were hard on yourself. Write about how you might approach the same situation with kindness and understanding. What words of support would you offer a close friend in your shoes?
Finally, I’m also going to highly suggest you listen to my Loving Kindness Guided Meditation every day for one week to help you learn how to have more self-compassion!
Putting It All Together
Emotional healing is a journey that requires patience and persistence. By mastering last week’s lesson on self-regulation and then adding this week’s teaching on mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-acceptance, you can absolutely create a foundation for lasting change. Remember, healing isn’t about fixing yourself because you’re broken; it’s about nurturing yourself because you’re worthy of love and care.
Resources for Emotional Healing Techniques: Mastering Mindfulness and Self-Acceptance/Compassion
Join Abby’s online community, One Love Collective on Patreon to get exclusive access to content.
How to Practice Self-Acceptance: My Top 5 Tips
Overcoming Insecurity and Silencing Your Inner Critic