Thursday, September 9, 2010

Compassion, Days 6-7-8

Seeing both sides of an issue is a good thing.

In terms of this battle with compassion, I find myself being increasingly aware of my compassion towards others but backing off when it takes over and blocks out my own self-compassion.

That sounds like double-speak! This is what is happening...

I see a situation taking place. My normal reaction is to feel compassion for the "victim" and then expend a lot of mental energy on my reaction to this situation. My new reaction is the same process but I catch myself doing an "eval" of the scenario, determine whether or not I need to be involved somehow and to what extreme, and then coming to a "solution" or "finale" and moving on from that situation. I also found my brain working over the situations and checking the "file cabinet" for a past experience of feeling compassion in a similar scenario.

End result? I haven't experienced a stress-level that I was feeling before this experiment began. This past week I've experienced some intense situations and kept my cool through it all. (well, my principal told me I was a "Mad Momma" the day the stereo and woofers were stolen from Tyler's truck... but I thought I stayed fairly calm considering...)

Compassion: keeping your emotions in check and telling yourself "this really sucks and it's awful to experience this!" Or, something like that :)