Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Self-compassion in the time of the coronavirus

Let's start with how silly my title is. There are probably going to be a lot of these "in the time of..." references. But it came to me today so I'm writing it. This blog is really just for me these days anyways (and you, lucky reader, if you stumbled across this).
I keep coming back to my need for self-compassion. The need is not just, in fact, for me to feel good, but I'm realizing that not being compassionate with myself has prevented me from most of the meaningful accomplishments I've longed for.
As a side note, I gave a lightning talk a few weeks back at Wikimedia All Hands on Self-Compassion and it may be one of the highlights of my professional career (aside from the Solarpunk talk I gave the year before).
I realize not everyone has heard of self-compassion. Kristin Neff has written extensively about it and has good examples on her website. To me, what's important is that it's about recognizing pain and giving myself kindness instead of criticism.
Right now, people in the US are starting to panic about coronavirus (at least, according to my social medias). I am trying not to panic too. I am enormously privileged and the truth is that the impact on me is likely to be much, much less than for a lot of other people. However, I still see the future shrinking up and disappearing in front of me. I imagine all my dreams to be suddenly out of reach. Of course, this is happening not because of COVID-19, but because this is my default reaction to stress.
When I step back and try to use self-compassion though, I see how I'm talking to myself, and how it is my own view that I am unable to cope with these stressors that is hurting not only me, but the other people I do not even think about in my panic. And because I am panicking, I want to hoard my own resources, money, time, health, and can't see how I could help anyone else.
I don't know what I have to offer to others in all this. Money is a good first step, and if my skills can be useful in another way, I hope to be able to provide that. Accepting myself and the situation with kindness will be a necessary first step towards any contribution though.

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