"When you're down and troubled and you need some love and care..." Look in the mirror!
Being Your Own Best Friend.... Ok, ok. Stop rolling your eyes and laughing, you cynical types. I admit, that the phrase, “being one’s own best friend” can sound a little cheesy and touchy feely. And, anyone acquainted with the classic Saturday Night Live skits can easily drum up the memory of the skit with Michael Jordan and the character “Stuart Smalley” who describes himself as a “caring nurturer,” where Stuart talks with Michael about the pressures he must feel as a professional basketball player and has Michael talk to himself in a mirror with daily affirmations saying he is, “good enough, smart enough, and dog gone it, people like me.” I laugh too when I think of it. I have even laughed with clients about it when starting the discussion on becoming one’s own best friend. However, when I am working with people on getting through severe depression or debilitating anxiety or trauma, being able to be a supportive figure in one’s own life is no laughing matter. It’s a necessity. I talk with clients about being their own best friend and what that would mean to them. I have them contemplate in detail what being a friend to someone means and how they would be a friend to someone who was struggling. Common responses are that they would “care about them, listen to them, offer advice, not judge them, support them and help in whatever way they could.” When I follow up with the question on whether or not they offer these types of supports to themselves, the answer is usually no. People are quick to say they are “their own worst enemy.” It really is baffling how so many people have been taught to not be kind to themselves. I don’t know what you think, but I think that going through this life with a person that I am stuck with the ENTIRE TIME (oneself) is a whole lot easier when it is a friendly, loving relationship rather than an adversarial and judgmental one. Being your own best friend means being fully supportive and caring for oneself. It means not judging oneself when things don’t work out the way we had planned. It means being able to comfort oneself when upset, sad or disappointed. To be a friend to oneself means being there in a caring, compassionate fashion no matter what. Think about it. How boring would it be if we never had to struggle? This world is about balance. We have “bad” so we can appreciate the “good”, up and down, right and left, hot and cold. We have difficulties so that the bliss of success, happiness and joy are that much sweeter. I remember reading something once that essentially said to give thanks for your hardships. I'm sure some of you just entered in the eye roll. I admit, the thought of being grateful for life’s difficulties doesn't come naturally, but the hardships are teaching you something and helping you grow and that is worthy of gratitude. Our responses to life circumstances can offer us tremendous insights about our growing edges, and noting how we then sit with our ourselves in regard to those responses is a vital component to our overall happiness and well-being. As part of our human experience we have emotional responses to everything. This is our natural state, our human nature. This first emotional response is what I call our initial level of engagement, that is to say, our first engagement with the world and ourselves. Having an understanding of why we choose our initial response is always worth the exploration. However, that can be an undertaking of epic proportions and is beyond the scope of this writing. I encourage people to be curious about what drives those initial emotional responses. This is something that psychotherapy can assist with for those that would like professional help with this process. Right now, though, I want to talk about the second level of engagement. This second level is the way in which we internally respond to ourselves in regard to our initial emotional reaction. For example, you may have an emotional reaction of sadness or embarrassment when your boss yells at you. This is your first level of response. Like I said, you can spend time exploring why you chose the emotion you chose for a deeper understanding of self, but for now let’s just say you felt sad. You feel your sadness. That is the first level of engagement. Your second level response might be to then judge or criticize yourself for feeling sad, telling yourself how weak you are for getting sad over this and how stupid you are for that. Your emotional self is now not only sad, but is feeling ashamed by the reprimand of the internal judgment and criticism you throw at it. You might already be seeing how this could start a snowball effect of negative emotions that quickly leads to utter yuckiness. Now, let's note the third level emotional response for a moment. You initially felt sad, then judged it and now you get angry at yourself for judging yourself for feeling sad. This anger then accentuates the dislike for yourself, increasing the feelings of shame and sadness. It can quickly get out of hand, can’t it! If that best friend within ourselves never steps in and speaks up, we end up in quite the quagmire of negative emotions. Let’s rewind and try this again, this time with a best friend in mind, literally – IN YOUR MIND. Your boss yells at you. Your initial level emotional response is sadness. Here’s where your own best friend gets to come in. Your inner friend non-judgmentally witnesses the sadness that is felt. Your inner friend offers comforting words, letting your sad side know that it is okay, reminding you that you can learn from this, or maybe to point out that it is not about you at all, but rather, that your boss was just in a bad mood and it's okay to let it go. Our inner best friend allows the sadness to be safe and acceptable while encouraging you to feel better. There are lots of comforting words to choose from. The important piece to all of this is to recognize and acknowledge the initial feeling (i.e. sadness), and then be nice, for goodness sake!! Don’t judge the emotion, honor it. You wouldn’t yell at your friend telling her how stupid she is for feeling something, would you? So, why do that to yourself? A main job of being our own best friend is to validate the initial emotion. No emotional choice is wrong. It’s what we do with it that matters. So let’s validate. “I’m sad. It’s alright to be sad…” The initial emotion needs to be recognized. Perhaps this is followed up with some self reflection as to why sadness was triggered. A line of inquiry and comforting can then develop. Emotions are meant to be transient, much like all of our day to day, moment to moment experiences. I would argue that one of the top reasons emotions linger longer than they are suppose to is because they never got validated. When we are children, we are learning how to name, and sit with and cope with our emotions. Our caregivers have a tall task in teaching us how to sit with our emotions, name them and comfort them. I don’t know about you, but I remember my father constantly telling me to “settle down.” It didn’t matter what emotions I was having, whether I was jumping for joy or if I was crying tears of pain. “Settle down” was his go-to and his way of teaching me how to handle my emotions. My father was not trying to be cruel with his minimizing and dismissal of my feelings. It is just that he never learned how to sit with and tolerate his own emotions, so he didn’t know how to do it with mine. My mother often responded with anger. Again, this was not so comforting and not very validating that my emotions were safe to experience. I’ve worked hard to develop my own inner best friend, my inner cheerleader and comforter and soother. I am hoping that this writing will help you to develop yours! It just feels better and isn’t that worth it, to feel better? Sometimes feeling better takes work. We may have an initial emotional response that seems over-reactive. Often we can trace it back to earlier experiences in life and all those unacknowledged, “uncomforted” emotions that never got to move out of our minds and bodies that still feed our current-day emotional choices. Like I said, emotions are meant to be transient, short-lived, but if those emotions never receive the right validation and acknowledgment then they stay in our system acting like antagonistic pieces of broken glass, poking, pinching and emotionally cutting at us until we address them. This is what over-reactions are often made of, built up emotional baggage. I hate to say it, because it is so very cliché in the therapy world, but it is true. Your inner child, the part of you that needed validation very early in life and never got it, or didn’t get enough of it, is still sitting there waiting for comfort. As adults now, we need to provide our own comfort to this part of us. Our parents may or may have not provided adequate soothing and role modeling for us. Regardless, the onus is on us now to give it to ourselves. The parts of us that never got the comforting and understanding that was deserved and needed in order to mend and heal are waiting. It starts with how you sit with those previously invalidated emotions today. Love them as you would your own child! Comfort them. Feel compassion for them and their pain. Pat your inner child on head, or offer a hug. Soothe the child. Stop the judgment. Stop dismissing and ignoring what you feel. By clearing out this old emotional baggage, we allow for more and more ability to let our energies flow as they are meant to, unimpeded by old emotional blocks that got built up over time from experiences of going unnoticed, unacknowledged and unloved. These days when I am visiting my father and he tells me to settle down, I say no. I keep jumping for joy and suggest maybe he give it a try. Nobody is raining on my parade anymore. If I am sad, I typically don’t share this with my parents. I provide comfort to myself and I seek out the company of those loyal friends that I trust will honor my emotions. It's not that our emotions need to be right, but they need to be heard and validated for being real. So, I challenge you to perch your awareness in the metaphorical tree of observation and look down at yourself and non-judgmentally witness how you are responding to your emotions. You may ask yourself, “What is it that needs healing in me right now? How can I soothe myself with unconditionally loving thoughts?” It is time to stop the dysfunctional judgment and criticism and to reactivate being your own best friend, the one you see in the mirror.
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