Tender & Fierce

This morning I read an article by Dr. Kristin Neff, pioneer in the study of self compassion, in which she writes about two different kinds of self compassion that are essential, especially for women: Yin self compassion is tender, it is loving kindness toward oneself, where Yang self compassion is fierce, it is the empowered, protective, truth-speaking form of self compassion. I love those two words so much, both individually and also how they fit together so gracefully to make a whole.

Earlier, I could feel the raw edges of rage the minute I got out of bed and my feet hit the cool floor. It's a quickening; a sudden red hot feeling of pressure and chaos, a wild animal clawing at my skin from the inside.

I seem able to find compassion for myself in many of the feelings I experience these days, though not rage, which has lately been exploding out of me without so much as the early warning I experienced this morning. It is a horrible thing, and afterwards, leaves me feeling buried in deep layers of intolerable shame and despair. Nora, my trauma-specialist psychologist tells me that not only is the rage appropriate and completely understandable given my traumas, but that it is a positive movement, a sign that the freeze that I have lived most of my life in is thawing, that the fight (of the fight/flight/freeze trauma response) instinct is coming alive. It is a relief to hear that, but there is a humongous gulf between that information and being able to stop feeling like the worst kind of human being possible, and it is in her office that the notion of self compassion keeps coming up, and I do see it there, I see it in her soft brown eyes when she looks at me in her tender way; I do see it, but it is not yet able to enter my being.

Here's the thing: as with so many other things in its vicious cycle, trauma itself affects a person's ability to practice self compassion. Ironic that it is compassion itself that carries within it the capacity to heal the very same trauma.

This morning, somehow, miraculously, I am able to skip the explosion and go straight to what always comes after, waves and waves of incredible grief and sorrow. Usually it's only through the raging that I am finally able to collapse into all that rests below it. But at least this morning, there is that.

And if not compassion itself, I have now these two words, which I will hold tenderly and fiercely to me, carry with me, write about, mull over, and try on for size when I am able.


With Love 🧡


Click here for the Kristen Neff article.