In a conversation about PTSD, my colleague, Pat Ogden, PhD told me that many of her clients struggling with PTSD also had insecure attachments. Often, these clients were veterans whose insecure attachments predisposed them to develop PTSD after combat.
This conversation got me wondering whether there were other predictors of PTSD aside from insecure attachment.
And, according to a study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 2015, there is.
Regina Hiraoka, PhD, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, conducted a prospective study with her team to look at how self-compassion relates to the severity of PTSD symptoms.
In the study, 115 ex-combat veterans who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan completed three tests measuring PTSD symptom severity, combat exposure, and their level of self-compassion. PTSD symptoms were determined from the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-IV (CAPS). This exam is considered one of the most reliable tests of PTSD.
The participants took two other exams, both self-assessments. The first of these asked the veterans to rate their level of combat exposure by number and intensity. The other was the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), a self-reported assessment developed by Kristen Neff, PhD measuring self-compassion. The SCS is the most psychometrically sound assessment of self-compassion to date.
So here’s what Hiraoka and her team found . . .
Of the 115 veterans, 73 reported having symptoms of PTSD from combat exposure at some point in their past while 43 had current symptoms.
Of those who had experienced PTSD at any point, a strong negative association was found between self-compassion and PTSD symptom severity. Those with more severe PTSD symptoms also scored lower in self-compassion.
Now, here’s the interesting part – when 101 participants returned for a re-assessment 12 months later . . .
. . . researchers found that self-compassion could also predict PTSD symptom severity – even after 12 months.
You see, those who scored higher on self-compassion during the first round of assessments returned with less severe symptoms of PTSD than those with initially lower self-compassion.
So what do we do with this information?
Well this research suggests that we might want to find some way to promote self-compassion in veterans in order to reduce the predisposition for PTSD.
If you’d like to read this study for yourself, you can find it in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, volume 28, edition 2, pp. 127-133.
And if you’d like to hear more of the latest research and strategies in trauma treatment, please join us for this week’s free broadcast in the Treating Trauma Master Series.
Now, I’d like to hear from you. Have you found any connection between self-compassion and PTSD in your clinical work?
Please leave a comment below.
I think the biggest predictor of severe PTSD besides poor attachment is
a discompassionate BIRTH scenario.,,,being left alone in an incubator or poked and prodded when you are hardly formed, feeling lost in space due to endocrine disrupting induction and augmentation drugs. Of all beings, a newborn is SENSITIVE and VULNERABLE.
Using somnambulistic regression hypnosis I took a young suicidal woman back to her birth incubator where she was reliving an experience of not being attended to when she cried. Just exactly as you postulate, she was feeling willfully rejected by the nurse and could even asses that the nurse both did not like her (or so she perceived) and the nurse did not like her nursing job in the nursery. “I feel unwanted, and worthless.”
I felt we had to go back further still because after all she survived the experience as traumatic as it was for her. Next, this white woman was talking to me as a black slave. Now she was in a different life reality, picking cotton. Her fingers were raw, as the task was new and hands not yet calloused over. I moved her to an important time in this slave’s life. She was crying profusely, “My baby, they took my baby.” While this made no sense economically, for a cruel owner to separate mother and infant before the baby was weaned, it was none the less her experience. She felt rejected, unloved, and abused, totally alone and abandoned.
Now I know most reading this can not accept the past slave life as valid, that’s not the point, the woman’s Subconscious believed it to be real. Past life trauma memories often precondition compassion and manifest confusingly in this life. Priests taking vows of celibacy in a past life often suffer sexual performance issues until their subconscious can be reasoned with. The subconscious is very literal and often does not know what body it’s in. It sometimes needs to be reasoned with that those vows were fulfilled and completed and not needed in the new life. A drowning victim may carry a phobia of water, a violent injury may carry through as a birth mark exactly where the injury was inflicted.
Preconditioning has more elements to it than one can imagine sometimes.
My research actually finds infants have awareness in ways modern science seems completely unaware, yet could confirm using simple recording devices. I do not have the proper language to express this in scientific terms. Babies communicate knowledgeably with each other at a very deep soul-to-soul level, through reverse speak. While we do not lose reverse-speak as we grow into adults, we lose the comprehension of communication that babies exhibit.
So there can be and usually are multiple levels of comprehension and communication occurring in the nursery.
(1) Tend to me, comfort me.
(2) I like you, I don’t like you, because.
(3) Reverse speaking to other babies in the nursery at a surprisingly mature level of communication – soul to soul.
I find this very interesting. I have suffered from PTSD and my self compassion was very low for quite some time. I have been really working on my self compassion and the symptoms of PTSD have reduced greatly.
I also find many clients struggle with self compassion and limiting beliefs.
Marquelle Brown, MS
Compassionate parents early in development and consistencies in that parenting throughout life can be of value to handle traumas. Family needs to be a place one can go when in need. If that never existed, life becomes severely complicated in coping with life challenges.
I do not see that the life is void of compassion, as it can be learned from others along the way. The resiliency scale is a place to start after the ACE scores are high as it begins to help the client see who was there in times of stress that helped with self compassion even if they might not have recognized this before they walked into the office.
The vets are looking for their own self compassion. They almost always gravitate to something missing in early childhood that they see as the motivating force that drove that military path. It is often the family they never had that they seek. It helps make that military experience more palitable. The soldiers often learn self compassion there if it had been absent in early childhood.
Thank you Marcia for your reminder. The same could be said for youth and children on the fringes – how and why they gravitate toward the compassionate groups of gangs. Even when kids connected to gangs are incarcerated it becomes difficult to break these bonds unless genuine alternatives give them access to self compassion and justification for their actions.
What’s difficult is that “self-compassion” resonates with general compassion and the “warrior” mentality that is drilled into these soldiers “has no compassion” for the enemy. In fact, their training tends to train “Compassion” out of the picture. When I practice self compassion I find that it increases best when I send compassion to others and all sentient beings.
This is so true. Thanks for commenting.
Self compassion seems to take and immediate turn for the better, with NDE’s, Out of Body Experiences, Astro Travel, Transformative dream experiences, even with the majority of clinically controlled 5MEO-DMT trips. The two common denominators seem to be (1) Any survivable experience that temporarily let’s ego take a holiday. (2) The realization through experience that consciousness may not end when this life ends.
Taking the client into non drug induced deep somnambulistic trance with regression hypnosis.
The client is present, socially engaged with the hypnotist, experiencing the onset trigger moment of the trauma experience, and objectively observing as the hypnotist speaks to the client’s subconscious directly. Allopathic treatment techniques refer to this as “integration of parts” of the brain. Apparently through deep hypnosis, the center line of the brain’s self-awareness centers are reconnecting again with memory centers and reprogramming new feelings and emotional outcomes through integration of it parts.
I see this from an anecdotal perspective as a Chaplain, regarding the secondary stress and even direct stress in our psychiatric hospital among staff after assaults, death of a colleague or patient and in a threatening environment of assault (and sometimes administrative fault finding after these events). It can linger!
With or without PTSD, we get nowhere in our relations with humans without self-compassion and self-worth.
Doesn’t the capacity for self-compassion also arise from the quality of our early attachment relationships? If we don’t experience compassion from our caregivers for e.g. our distress, then we tend not to develop self-compassion.
… thank you, Beaula. I, too, think both predictors must be very closely related.
Can anyone recommend a reading or too on how the help someone improve their self-compassion? Thank you
Google Christopher Germer and Kristen Neff for books, research, articles, mindfulness self-compassion exercises and meditations.
Thank you very much Suzanne. I appreciate you taking the time to send me this information
Kristen Neff also has a free website that has resources such as compassionate Mindfulness exercises and compassion focused written exercises. Also has resources and recommends self help books etc. See Paul Gilbert self help book and he also has You Tube videos of his workshops which I would highly recommend if you would like to see a master of self compassion in action.
It appears to be common that the one stryggled to recover among many I experienced were indeed mostly those had a traumatic early childhood related secure attachment and bonding relationship or development in children. This group had low self esteem and confidence of themselves and constantly sought assurance in relationship. The same groups seem to experience mood changes often triggered by environmental changes in relations and these were often misinterpreared as a threat to losing relationship or feared non existing threat manufacturers within their emotional anxiety state.
If we look at PTSD through an “Energy Paradigm” lens, then we understand that when a person feels (or can feel) more “filled with energy,” such as when they feel GRATITUDE for something, their level of stress drops. Less Stress = More Energy. More Energy = More Resources to deal with life’s ups and downs. Self Compassion is simply another way to add the feeling of “more energy” and may not be as readily available to the person because of other hardwired beliefs they hold. Gratitude can be for ANYTHING, such as choosing to FEEL GRATEFUL for the color of the blue sky, or the twinkling of a star, or the beauty of a flower. Choosing to have “Gratitude Breaks” through the day might be a truly significant and easy coping technique to reduce the amount of stress which brings on PTSD symptoms. Faster than coffee breaks!
How would that play into today’s societies need of immediate gratification in a disposable world, and an almost always underlying diagnosis of ADHD/Anxiety (at least here in the United States where childhood immunizations are mandated with suspect relationship to the above mentioned diagnosis)? I have spent over 35 years doing Medical, Vocational, Drug/Alcohol Rehab, and Wellness Counseling, along with Teaching K – 12 grade earlier in my career. Perhaps the most rewarding and educational was two and a half years developing curriculum, counseling and doing recreational therapy on an inpatient 28 day stay drug/alcohol inpatient treatment facility. Almost all of the rehab/counseling population will report an incident of trauma, referring to a self diagnosis of PTSD. They choose to self-sedate and numb their feelings with their drug/alcohol of choice, or any other addictive behaviors that are conducive to healthy lifestyle choices. In the United States, we have developed a lifestyle pace that far exceeds the capabilities of human behavior, ie. computer and robotic technology! Our collegic scholars, our very own children and grandchildren, have invented technology to outperform the human body, thus causing physical, mental, physiological, psychological, sociological, and psychiatric burnout of the anatomical structure and mind! Next the pharmaceutical companies come in with medications, after a period of clinical trials, with some being fast-tracked for approval. Then the physicians prescribe medications that are neatly classified into ICD-9 codes or other qualifying mental health Axis codes, with the PTSD patient thinking he/she can take a pill and make it all go away! Society needs to SLOW DOWN and realize, “things are not going to get done upon demand, we do not live in a ‘disposable society’, everything takes time, effort and nurturing from marriages, to meal preparation, to thesis writing, to completing a project at work, to partner intimacy”, Etc..
PTSD is one of the many health diagnosis that is resurfaced as stress increases, just as any other mental or physical diagnosis! It is the opinion of many, that if you place your candidate in an environment with the least amount of stress, or teach the most valuable relaxation/meditation/visual imagery/ biofeedback techniques available within your means and comprehension of your client you will have a decrease in their mental or physical symptomatology!
It is highly unlikely that within our generation we are going to be able to change our societal cultures, which is all to unfortunate! However, we as a group, sure can slow the train down so it doesn’t derail with all the passengers aboard for the betterment of our society and countries in which we live! It will not be until then that you see a reduction in PTSD, or any other mental/physical diagnosis and/or opioid-related drug overdose deaths!
As a side note, I happen to live in a very small community where DWIs and cancer are some of the highest statistically, in the country! I am one of the rare cancer survivors of 28 years, living on the theory of Wellness being the balance of mind, body and spirit . . . convertly, equaling God, Family, then work. “Find a way to share the balance!”
Thank you for listening!
*After having spent my teenage years in Lake Tahoe and coming to New York only for a visit, I am now transitioning out of the full-time component of medical, vocational, drug/alcohol rehab and into my lifelong interest of Wellness and hobby of Custom Sewing, embroidery, commercial monogramming, silk screening and promotional products for employment.
I wish everyone in this world a happy, healthy, joyful holiday season and a very Merry Christmas!
Respectfully and proudly Submitted,
Lee Ann Mullen, BA, AS, Consultant, Owner
Tahoe Pines Wellness Center, LLC
Tahoe Pines Custom Sewing & Designs
tahoepinescustomsewing@gmail.com
yes and yes!
Reading this piece and comments, I am fascinated. Understanding the causes, experience of, and resolution of trauma is extremely complex. My early developmental trauma is vastly different from the PTSD veterans wrestle with. I have had the BEST therapist for many years, on a path that frustrates us both at times. I have studied emerging research on trauma treatment, tried the strategies and methods that emerged then faded for 55 years. I have a harsh inner critic, and study happy people to discern what creates optimism. I started looking at brain research from 1980 to the present, attended seminars ranging from snapping a rubberband on my wrist to Zen meditation, intense physical fitness, yoga, and more recently mindfulness and self-compassion. I don’t know what works with clients in trauma from other experiences but I know what has worked for me: A skilled, attuned therapist for three decades who never gave up on me, gently taught me how to set healthy boundaries with wide margins when needed, taught me how to lift depression and tame anxiety. What actually worked? An excellent therapist who held me in authentic high regard, offered the secure attachment I lacked from birth, and who gently taught me the internal processes of accepting empathy from him and now from myself. In short, love works. And I now experience joy overflowing. This process takes a beating in a profession devoted to achieving specific behavior objectives in 4-6 weeks, and cautioning against getting too “close” to the Client. I am blessed. Even this thinking no longer triggers my anxiety and raises my blood pressure. Selah.
I have had much the same experience as you, and I was glad to read your comment. I too have complex PTSD due to severe early childhood trauma. I too have worked with a wonderful therapist for 17 years now, and it’s helped me a lot. I still have a ways to go, but I know I am progressing in my healing. You’re right, love does work. 4-6 weeks of therapy, HAH! LOL. It’s sad, though, that it’s taken me so long to A) find a really good therapist, and B) do the work that I need to do. I would have preferred to have had a normal life, thank you. As it is, I’ve devoted most of my life to healing all the crap that happened to me during my first 18 years.
Regarding self-compassion, as my therapist’s compassion for me has helped me to develop my own self-compassion, it really has helped me love myself more and have fewer PTSD symptoms.
Thanks for your insightful comment.
The feeling of LOVE is a wonderful way to feel more ENERGY. More energy = less stress. Love heals … unless it turns into fearing the loss of love.
Again, the feeling of GRATITUDE can even help deal with the loss of love. We can feel grateful for having had that person in our lives — for the good stuff — or even grateful that they are gone! (Ha Ha)
Stress = Contracted Energy, i.s., Life Force Energy. Laughing is also a great antidote to stress. However, I find the real cure for contracted energy (which we often blame on experiences in our lives) is to find the Hardwired Unloving Beliefs (subconscious — and NOT our fault) that are “coming true” in that not–good experience.
Removing the Hardwired Unloving Beliefs (such as “I am insignificant; I am misbegotten, I am unprotected, etc.”) REQUIRES heating up – owning – and melting off the “Emotional Solder” – aka “stuck emotion” – that holds in one’s own Hardwired Unloving Beliefs on your subconscious circuit board. At that point, you are able to discard those “false truths” that show up, and change to more Loving Beliefs: “I chose to be human; I am a unique expression of Loving-Life-Force-Energy; I honor me; I am willing to be safe, etc.”
Without melting off the Emotional Solder, I find that you cannot remove the old beliefs. Affirmations do NOT remove the old beliefs. Affirmations can add more energy and reduce stress, but to change ones instinctive reactions (which include PTSD symptoms), we need to rewire — with heat — the subconscious circuit board. I’ve developed a method to do that — as well as an understanding of what it takes to transform such beliefs, whether consciously, or spontaneously. Contact me if you want to know more.
Sure what’s next?
Thank you for sharing your insight! Sending admiration, and compassion your way and gratitude to the wonderful therapists who have guided your journey. May you be well, may you be happy, may you be at peace, and may you continue to share your wisdom for the growth of others..
Wouldn’t it be great if a researcher did a study to fin out what % of veterans developed PTSD if they had experienced a full shaking and tremoring discharge of their neurobiological response to a specific trauma event within the 6 hour consolidation window?
At a workshop on the weekend, a dog handler reported that she had already noticed that after a dog fight, if the dog goes through a shaking discharge afterwards they are calm and relaxed in approaching other safe dogs but if they haven’t they remained hyper-vigilant and scared even when the other dogs were friendly and no threat.
That absolutely makes sense. It is apparent in one’s upbringing would be affecting this just as you said depending on how secure or safe they feel as a person.
In the UK we have Compassion Focused Therapy developed by Dr Paul Gilbert. He had patients who had benefitted from CBT but told him they didn’t feel any/much happier. He developed an approach which involves an assessment of how far we are to blame for early experiences and what defences we evolved. The brain is deigned to search for danger to keep us safe but that is not the same as keeping us happy. However we can use our intelligence and imagination to do this with exercises in compassion. Three year follow ups showed that his patients took more responsibility for their lives and were happier. I have found his insights useful in my work.
I’m very interested to hear of this link shown for PTSD.
In my training and work in Clinical Hypnotherapy, which was developed as a general treatment through the understandings coming from neuroscience, interrupting negative inner talk and moving instead to a context of self compassion and the meeting of our needs is the foundation on which all development rests.
I’d also like to express my deep thanks to you collectively for this wonderful body of work you have developed and shared over the years. I only started to engage with it a couple of years ago through a local training group when at the time I was beset by circumstances that were utterly beyond my ability to cope.
Not only has your work given me a better life back than I actually had before, but I also have a better understanding and ability to help others too.
My warmest thanks.
Well, the two do seem to have a positive correlation. My clients with PTSD, are, are lease by subjective measures, very hard on themselves, often don’t like themselves, and have exceedingly high standards for themselves compared to more realistic and compassionate standards for others.
I work at a therapeutic horse ranch and I had this intuition the other day while working with a group of Veterans
How do you know if lack of self compassion is the predictor or the result of PTSD?
Excellent question! Thanks Marie….
I work with a client who, due to on going daily unavoidable microtrauma for six years, developed CPTSD and totally lost her self compassion through the shame of not being able to rise above her abuse. She had previously been grounded and centred in a healthy Self, which was physically worn down by stress.
There is a danger in trying to makes rules and algorithms for issues, and it’s important to take each client’s material separately and not fit it into boxes and labels….DSMV pathologising human grief, for example.
Well, I have long since said that self compassion and self care are a key to prevent PTSD from Vicarious Trauma sufferers. I advocate and do workshops for front line workers in hospitals, rape centers, police, and lately I have prepared a workshop for veterinarians. The statistics show that the rate of suicide by veterinarians is 4 times higher than in the general population. I work on self care and resilience in the workshops using the “Group Puzzle” model I created.
veterans or veterinarians?
Hannah this could be a typo, but did you mean veterans or veterinarians?
I have found that within the level of compassion, I have needed to give permission to them for them to do that. Permission was required for them to feel ok about starting to have self-compassion
This is hardly surprising given what know about interactions leading to insecure attachment. For example, in avoidant attachment, studies demonstrate a rejecting caregiver. The child experiences himself as bad.
definitely related. havving compassion for one’s self IS A BAsic coping skill, and related to not finding fault with oneself or HIC behavior
I’m not a psychologist but I’m a real-life survivor of a MVA that left me in a full coma for 5 months. I went on to achieve 3 qualifications in the Humanities. Self-compassion was ONE factor that enabled me to give meaning to the accident. I’m sure it’s the reason I can write this today.
Isn’t this research pointing to the same underlying contributor to PTSD, e.g. insecure attachment adaptations? I would expect self compassion is established in a secure attachment between a child and its primary care giver during the early formative years. And it’s unlikely that people with insecure attachment adaptations will have developed a strong capacity for self compassion. So I tend to think that this research isn’t telling us something new and unexpected.
I guess it’s big news because Self-compassion is a skill that can be taught whereas attachment isn’t so easily shifted.
Still think your going to need secure attachment experiences ( therapy, partner), to teach self compassion. You can’t seperate one from the other.
I agree. It certainly has been true for me, in healing my PTSD. Self-compassion was impossible until the secure attachment with my therapist developed.
What would also be interesting to research is if veterans who developed PTSD had suffered trauma and/or were in lack of self compassion before they entered military service and the service itself triggered these earlier experiences…
Yes Adi, that is quite often the case
When I work with children using EFT the sentence I start with is:” Even though I feel……(they fill in whatever they feel), I am a great kid”. There wasn’t one kid whose eyes wouldn’t lit up when they said that out loud which is kind of sad…..
This makes so much sense!
Thank you so much for sending it through, I can definitely see it applying to clients of mine with PTSD (and C-PTSD) symptoms.
Indeed they have very low self-compassion.
This makes sense.
Many of the veterans I work with experience survival guilt. Having witnessed or knowledge of the death of others and in some cases participating In the death of others. These veterans often struggle with survival guilt and injured self-compassion which in turn often leads to self defeating behaviors. Veterans who have some type of social support (attachments) are able to recover more efficiently while others lacking such support more often than not lack self-compassion. We as therapists are in a great position to provide some form of attachment, support and opportunity for the veteran to develop self-compassion.
definitely related. havving compassion for one’s self IS A BAsic coping skill, and related to not finding fault with oneself or HIC behaviortough question. a bit of both!
well said about the conundrum of guilt of surviving and guilt from killing another soul
If compassion is not learned during childhood, or all those necessary neuropathways not activated because of trauma, neglect, abuse etc then there will be no self compassion. This will always be a high indicator of those that will be pre-disposed to PTSD.
I am not a clinician; however as an ESE teacher and school counselor, I have worked with many children and adolescents suffering from diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD and other life experiences that created suffering. What would lead you to even question that self compassion would not positively impact any human suffering?
A hypothesis is different than evidence. The actual evidence is important because there are times what we intuitively believe is inaccurate.
I am not a clinician; however, I have worked with children and adolescents suffering from diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD and other life experiences that created suffering as a ESE teacher and school counselor. What would lead you to even question that self compassion would not positively impact any human suffering?
In myself, I have found that the coupling of CPTSD and long term illness worked as a portal to learning self compassion. Developing self compassion became a survival skill, one which I hope, over time, will supersede the old trauma survival skills that no longer serve.
There was a study in Britain a few years ago that showed that new recruits with a history of severe trauma were more likely to return from battle with PTSD. It is very likely that severe trauma causes less self-compassion, especially if untreated.
Absolutely. Abuse teaches the opposite of self compassion so an abused person simply don’t have it in the tool kit until it is learned and applied. Thus, the intervention of another adult, say a teacher, modeling and teaching that to students is a powerful thing!
The path may be thus: as we are imperfectly loved, we get frustrated and feel lonely at times, not so securely attached. We may decide we have to do “it” ourselves, even subconsciously form the idea that “it” is our own fault, just to keep a sense of control in insecure circumstances. Selfcompassion would not really helpfull here.
So when next trauma happens, we may have a sense of failing in this intention, which leaves us totally hopeless, seeing no solution without nor within. The sense of failing may also serve to beat us up internally. Could then outer trauma give rise to inner traumatising, as Susan Meindl writes, “the critical inner voice has no real-world checks and balances so that it can be as vicious and extreme as it pleases without any moral or empathic impediment.” So hypothesis: is PTSD the logic consequence of eternal inner beating-up, more than of the traumatising outside event??
definitely related. havving compassion for one’s self IS A BAsic coping skill, and related to not finding fault with oneself or HIC behaviortough question. a bit of both!
Shared the above information on FB as it is so helpful. I resonated with the discovery that self compassion is a key to bringing some relief from PTSD and Trauma process. Deep heart Thanks. Brigitte
That does not surprise me in the slightest though I have never heard it put into words. I look forward to the coming webinar where it will be explored further. As a psychodynamic therapist I consider how the critical inner voice is projected and functions to focus perception on any small trace of critical or shaming attitudes in family and friends in order to justify it’s harshness. Unlike family and friends however, the critical inner voice has no real-world checks and balances so that it can be as vicious and extreme as it pleases without any moral or empathic impediment.
I imagine self compassion is a strong challenge to the inner critic
Self-compassion can be cultivated despite having toxic or dysfunctional attachments. For instance, there is such a thing as ‘earned secure attachment’, brain plasticity and other trauma-informed understandings which offer some cause for optimism. I work with people who had suffered abuse and neglect at the hands of their attachment figures. That is, I see clients who grew up with a parent with a mental illness, which is the subject of my research entitled: “Lives Unseen: Unacknowledged Trauma of Non-Disordered, Competent Adult Children of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness” freely available at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Just Google my name: Suzette Misrachi and you’ll get it and also free e-publication updates aimed at mental health practitioners, but which I put on medium.com for anybody to access. There’s a whole variety of ways of assisting clients to develop self-compassion post-trauma. There is hope!
Self Compassion — thats one reason why EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique; plus Matrix re-imprinting using EFT if needed; are so effective.
The statement: “Even Though——– I deeply accept & love myself”
says a lot, especially when ‘programmed’/entrained into the body-mind via the energy/meridian system.
Combined with understanding, CBT, emotional release/resolution forgiveness, mindfulness—-powerful combinations.
My sentiments exactly Kwen!
Havening Techniques ( developed by Dr Ronald Ruden and Steven Ruden was influenced by EFT) is another fantastic way to clear the trauma , build resillience and self compassion as well as so much more . “Fifteen minuets to freedom, The power and Promise of Havening Techniques ” By Harry Pickens is a good resource to read.
I have absolutely no self compassion but because of the small nature of the island and how broke I am financially and now physically, I can’t see a way forward , and the only thing I’ve fought was to stay alive and pay bills ,
I hope you have a community that you can lean on for support, and that you consider learning some Loving Kindness meditations. Best of luck to you.
Ian have you looked for any Meditation or Buddhist groups near you? These can be very supportive. If not accessible you could join one/some online and or read about loving kindness and teachings of the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and others.
Wouldn’t self compassion arise out of a history of healthy attachment though? Experiencing care givers model and enact self and other compassion would indicate positive care giving environments. I’m unsure why its assumed here you can seperate self-compassion from attachment history. I’ve never seen a client with poor self-compassion whom had a history of consistent positive attachment experiences.
That is the point. Often those who have more severe PTSD come from families where the individual didn’t feel a sense of security or consistency in terms care and attention from parents/caregivers. They would develop into adults who would ignore or diminish their own needs given a lack of nurturing as children. This doesn’t only apply to vets, it also applies to children raised in unhealthy families where incest/emotional abuse was also part of the dynamic.
One has to worry about the generation of children who are being raised by parents who’s attachment is to their mobile phone or electronic equipment rather than their children.
Yes, Katherine. I agree completely. Secure attachment is the key factor in one’s ability to internalize and model self compassion. That said, education on the value of developing self compassion would be something vital to add to a client’s tool chest – such as a trauma-sensitive loving-kindness meditation starting with one’s self as is the practice.
Such is true Marian. I find the very act of using psycho-ed as a tool regarding trauma and attachment allows for ‘new experiences’ of self compassion to finally emerge. This is so for those who as Suzette pointed out have acquired earned security, later in life and those who are only now starting to experience it for the first time. This frame offers some space to become reflective, a path to self-compassion – how something unspeakable has changed them, rather than sit with the pathology within.