Sweet one:

A warm welcome to you and to the newest members of our community!  Things are starting to wake up in the Get It Dunn world and one sign is the Spring retreat is now open for registration.  Also, I am bringing back a favorite program from the GID vault – The 100 Day Challenge!  You can find more information about these programs after the message.  I would be delighted to have you join me for one or both of them!

A Little Compassion, Please!

I stood at the blackboard staring at the numbers, desperately willing them to magically make sense.  My high school math teacher stood over me, demanding that I solve the algebra equation he had written on the board. 

“WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU??” he yelled, “I HAVE TAUGHT YOU THIS OVER AND OVER AND OVER….SOLVE THE EQUATION!!”

I cringed as if I had been struck and could feel the tears starting to well up.  After a few more excruciating minutes of staring at the board in a panic, he took a step closer to me and with disgust practically oozing from his pores he yelled at me to sit down.

I returned to my desk, the telltale redness of shame and humiliation spreading over my neck and face.  A few of my classmates shifted nervously in their seats but most of them sat frozen, thankful that they hadn’t been the one at the blackboard and at the same time, terrified that they might be next. 

My math teacher did not have a reputation as a compassionate teacher.  It seems that he, like many of us, had been raised on the theory that motivation works best if it is harsh, humiliating and mean.  This type of motivation can work, briefly, but it creates a deep level of fear and is never sustainable over the long term. 

What my teacher didn’t realize was that he was creating the exact conditions that make it virtually impossible for me to learn. 

His yelling and shaming were threatening to me (along with his physical demeanor) and it triggered a response in my body that shuts everything down.  When you feel threatened, a defense mechanism is triggered in your body.  Your body believes its going to die so it prepares itself to fight, freeze or flee.  This preparation sends all your resources to your heart leaving all your other bodily systems with the bare minimum for survival. 

Including your brain. 

There is just enough power going to the brain to help your body fight, freeze or run away. There is nothing going to the parts of the brain that think, problem solve or create.  In other words, there is no ability to learn algebra when you are being threatened. 

What’s REALLY interesting to me is the same response happens in the body when the threat comes from the inside!  When you criticize, berate or speak harshly to yourself, your body thinks its under attack which means it immediately goes into defence mode and shuts everything down.  This may be manageable occasionally but if you are harshing on yourself daily you are doing some serious damage to your body.  Being in defense mode depletes your physical resources and erodes your body, leaving you tired, susceptible to illness (and eventually serious disease) and unable to think, create, solve problems or be effective in any way.  Your math teacher or your boss may not be yelling at you but if you are being mean and harsh to yourself it has the exact same effect. 

The good news is your body is also designed for another response.  When you are treated with warmth, kindness, gentle touch and soft voice tones, your body moves into a relaxation response.  There is a flood of oxytocin and other feel good hormones and chemicals through your body.  Your body softens, resources flow to all areas including the brain and you become more effective, open and creative. 

When you treat yourself with warmth, kindness, gentle touch and soft voice tones it’s called self-compassion and it is a very important ingredient if you want to have a healthy and joyful life.  No amount of exercise and eating right can make up for the damage done by beating yourself down!

We might not get much compassion from this world, but we always have the option to give it to ourselves.  I posted a short video on my Facebook page with a simple practice you can use if you need some ideas!  If we all start offering ourselves a little compassion, who knows what kind of world we will create?

Love,

P.S.  If you want to more tools to help you develop a self-compassion practice, I’ll be teaching them at the Spring Way of the Happy Woman retreat…. because a happy woman has healthy self-compassion!

P.P.S  I failed that math class and had to drop to a lower level but that put me with a different teacher and I was surprised to find out that I was able to learn math – once I wasn’t so scared!