Mindful Self-Compassion, Spring 2024
Week 6: May 30, 2024
“Meeting Difficult Emotions”
Home practices:
Being with Difficult Emotions (soften, soothe, allow)
Stages of Acceptance
Difficult emotions are emotions that cause us pain, such as anger, fear, and grief. They inevitably arise from conditions in our personal lives, but also from broader social and cultural conditions.
When we turn toward difficult emotions, even with mindfulness and loving-kindness, our pain may temporarily increase.
Meditators often wonder how much emotional distress they should allow into their practice? Meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hanh answered the question: “Not much!”
Experiencing discomfort is necessary for self-compassion to arise, but we only need to touch emotional pain.
Rumi's beautiful poem "The Guest House" (1999) offers reassurance that human beings have the capacity to be with very difficult emotions, but when given a choice, we should titrate the amount of suffering we allow in our lives to keep from becoming overwhelmed. That’s self-compassionate.
The Guest House
by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who [] sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
[They] may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Sometimes we aren't ready to have our homes swept of its furniture or it would not be safe to let the visitor in. The art of self-compassion is to incline gradually toward emotional discomfort, and accept emotional discomfort in stages.
There are 5 stages of acceptance (Germer, 2009) that can be illustrated, using the Rumi metaphor, by how we receive visitors to our home (Brähler, 2015):
Resisting – struggling against what comes; hiding in the house, blocking the door, or telling the visitor to go away.
Exploring – turning toward discomfort with curiosity; peeking through the peephole in the door to see who has arrived.
Tolerating – safely enduring, holding steady; inviting the guest in but asking them to remain in the entry hall of the house.
Allowing – letting feelings come and go; allowing the guest to go wherever they want to in the house.
Befriending – seeing the value in all experience; sitting down with the guest and listening to what the guest has to say.
Each successive stage corresponds to a gradual release of emotional resistance. Again, this does not mean accepting injustice; we are learning to hold pain itself that could turn toxic if we refuse to accept it.
This model gives us permission to close when dealing with difficult emotions. We do not have to engage with the most difficult emotions in our lives, nor do we want to use self-compassion as a strategy to eliminate difficult emotions.