Many people wonder why on earth I chose to be a therapist. “Why would you want to sit all day and listen to people’s pain and suffering, life is hard enough as it is!” The funny thing is, listening to …
Tag: Compassion
Empathy is Learned in Childhood
Empathy is the ability to feel compassion for other people., it involves being sensitive to the feelings of others and reacting with that information in mind. If you have had children, you will know that in the early years children …
How to Work with Shame
Nathanson (1992) presents a fabulous tool to show us how shame shows up. When we look at the middle axis of withdrawal and avoidance, we see two different behaviours. With withdrawal, there is hiding and disconnection. We know from research …
The Positive Seeds
Thich Nhat Hanh – No Mud, no Lotus. Most spiritual teachers, if you listen long enough, will start to talk about the mind as having ‘seeds’. All the ‘seeds’ in the mind have a different vibration to them. There might …
The Art Of Re-Parenting Part 9 – Self-Reparenting
When we have been raised in an unhealthy environment, when we have experienced neglect, abuse, invalidation, narcissism, conflict or violence, as adults there is still part of us that is expecting the same behaviour from those we love. We learn …
Therapist as Compassionate Witness
Jack Kornfield, a wonderful and inspiring Buddhist teacher says in his book “After the ecstasy, the laundry” (2001) that after years of emptiness practice unresolved childhood issues still emerged when he was back with his family. He said, he needed …
How to Enhance Compassion
What to do if we find it hard to be Compassionate Compassion is a virtue, which means, “to suffer together”. Put that way it does not sound very appealing! However in all the major religions compassion is talked about as …