Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)
[0:13] Creative self-compassion for mental health.
Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.
Hello, hi, everybody. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, and welcome to Your Heart magic. Today we are starting a new series, it is one that is going to be ongoing and take place approximately the fourth week of every month. And it is called Mental Health toolbox. And we will be looking at different topics that help us put some tools and ideas into our mental health toolbox. And hopefully inspire some perspectives. And also some strategies or things that you can try to take good care of yourself, take good care of your mental health.
So today's topic is creative compassion. And we will be talking about self compassion and how we can take creative approaches to self compassion, whether creative might mean artistic, or some of us or just out of the box ways of approaching self compassion. And I'm talking about some perspectives behind that. And a few tools. As many of you know who tune into this My background is as a clinical psychologist, I run a private practice.
And I fully believe that not only does mental health matter, but even when we identify as being on a spiritual path. And we are wanting to spiritually awaken wanting to tap into more ideas around spirituality and intuition and opening up to our relationship with the universe and our ideas around all that transcendental and transpersonal. And things that are a little bit more cosmic and galactic.
Even with all of that I'm such a firm believer and the importance of having a good mental health foundation. I think that that helps keep us grounded. I think that sometimes it can be a little bit tricky and a little bit sticky. If we're looking at an issue in our life, and we're trying to figure out what is the origins of this, if I'm feeling depressed? Is there something happening right now that might have to do with a depression?
Or is there something happening that might be more spiritual and being really out of rhythm with myself, and as somebody who has a background as I said, in psychology, but I'm also a intuitive I often call myself an intuitive psychologist or spiritual psychologist, I think the podcast is the psychologist with the mystic mind, I like to blend both and look at both perspectives. And I've often found that I think having a good foundation and trying to take good care of our mental health is a really good anchor for us.
And it's something that we can always come back to so that no matter how we might open ourselves up and seek out more mystical experiences or higher experiences or trying find that higher perspective, we have a really nice grounded way to also work with some of the gritty things in life and work with the hard things in life, and work with our shadows and work with things that might be coming up for us that are causing us a sense of inner conflict, or a sense of unease or being out of rhythm with ourselves.
And I think self compassion. It's just a beautiful concept. I think that it is a really good quality for any of us to develop.
[4:19] Self-compassion and creativity for emotional wholeness.
Because where we find compassion, we find love. And where we find love, we find light and where we find light, we find a way to constructively work with harder experiences, darker experiences, things that might trip us up or make us judge ourselves or feel out of sync with ourselves. And we can bring light into those spaces.
We turn the lights on in rooms inside of ourselves that were previously dark or previously locked closet doors and it was like our internal junk closet and we don't like to look at what's in there. And sometimes we don't even like to acknowledge it. And when we find the courage to turn the lights on in that space, that is one way that we might think about enlightenment illumination.
Being an enlightened individual, the more we can open up space inside of ourselves, the more we can open up a free flowing dialogue and free flowing relationship with our inner world that is rooted in self forgiveness and empathy and compassion and becoming a witness to our own experience.
And the more we don't shut out the parts of ourselves and the experiences of our human journey that we don't like, or perhaps we want to judge them as inferior, or something about ourself that maybe feels like a character defect or a flaw, or something where we really messed up.
And we don't even like to admit it, there's shame there. But the more that we're able to open up the windows and those rooms inside of us and let in fresh air, let in some sunlight, and work on bringing space to those parts of ourselves, the more I think it helps us feel like a whole person, it helps us move into a more healed relationship with ourselves.
And it's one of the ways that I think about emotional wholeness, emotional wholeness being when we can hold space for all experiences of sell, and find a way to love over all of it, find a way to bring compassion or acceptance.
So I'm very pro compassion, I'm very pro self compassion. And I'm also pro creativity. I'm a really creative person. I love alliteration. So creative compassion was not only a fun title for this episode, but I was actually thinking about the idea that sometimes when it comes to self compassion, we have to get a little bit creative.
Many of us have a well developed critical voice, or well developed critical voices, or judgmental voices. And these come from many things, these can come from something that occurred in our upbringing, if we had someone in our family of origin, a parent figure, somebody in our educational experience in school, a teacher, somebody in authority, who was very critical of us are very judgmental of us, or very cruel to us, and said negative, hurtful, harmful things. It's not uncommon to internalize the voice of that individual or to internalize those messages.
Sometimes we will have a voice parroting back this old program of what so and so said to us, and for some people, if I might ask the question, like, how far back does that message go? When was the first time that you remember somebody telling you, you're not enough or whatever it is that maybe the fear is that's coming up. Many individuals can they can say it's not a big mystery, they can say, Oh, this is something that I was told by, you know, fill in the blank with whoever it was for them. Sometimes it is a little more nebulous than that.
[8:25] Using self-compassion to move past judgement and fear.
And it's more of societal expectations, and messages that we have picked up just from being a participant on the human journey and living in the cultures and microcosms and communities that we do.
There is a lot of inherent judgment and criticism and fears that we have that come from many places, but the collective as a whole, our perception sometimes of what society might think, often if we are working on overcoming the fear of shining or sharing our light, or stepping out into the world in a bigger way.
For many individuals, there are messages that might come up that have something to do with, it's not okay to shine bright, or it's fears around. But what will people think of me if they know I'm secretly into spirituality and mysticism, this was an old fear of mine. And it was one that was really rooted.
And my background as a psychologist and having identified like that for so long, and if people knew me really well, it was not a shock that I had interest in spirituality, and things that were a little bit more mystical and a little bit more what some people might call of the woo persuasion.
But I think that my sense was but if everybody knew this about me if I stepped out, and I found the courage to say, Oh, I'm a psychologist, and I also Have intuitive guests. I am a mystic minded I'm really open to these ideas. I'm open to the metaphysical I'm open to energy, psychology and spirituality and collecting information and learning about things like astrology and the Tarot and things like that, what I be judged?
And would that make somebody look at me and say, Oh, well, she's not a real psychologist, or a real academic or a real, whatever it is that the fear was, and I didn't even realize how much of that was there until I moved to kawaii and really started to put my work out there in a bigger way, and started to find the courage to try and speak about it a little bit more openly, and integrate my experience of self and what I felt my gifts and talents were and do things like write that up in a bio or update my website and have my website reflect all those sides of me or write an article on spirituality and archetypes and signs and symbols or something like that, when I started to find the courage to step outside of kind of weaving that side of myself into poetry.
And it's easy to hide it in poems and not come out and say what you believe, because writing is this beautiful way that others can sometimes not only take from it, whatever feels right for them. But often, when we read something that resonates with us, we project our own stuff onto it and say, Wow, I feel like this part was really speaking to me, or I know exactly what they mean.
And oftentimes, when we really think about, do we know exactly what they mean, unless we've asked the writer, what made you write this, and what was the inspiration and where were you at the time, you know, writing is so beautiful, as is any art because it's open to the interpretation of the individual reading, viewing, watching, listening.
And for me, when I started to actually have to write about my experience, or speak it or put it into words where it wasn't hidden in these little passages and poems, it brought up a lot of fears.
[12:18] Self-compassion and overcoming negative self-talk.
And this is where compassion comes in. When we find places inside of ourselves, where we have criticism or judgment, or something that says this feels scary, and I'm running into something that makes me want to shrink or contract, maybe it makes me feel not good enough, maybe it brings up a quality of self worth or shame, or who am I to maybe bring something up for us that feels uncomfortable.
Compassion, is how we learn to bring space into those parts of ourselves, the moment we give compassion to something we are offering grace, we are offering empathy, we are offering a sense of seeing things through a slightly softer lens. And as I said earlier, sometimes self compassion is hard. A lot of people know that it might be good to do things like say, affirmations to themselves. Sometimes where that fall short is we might not always believe them. For somebody who's really struggled with the concept of self love or self kindness or self forgiveness. They can try saying positive self statements.
And that's a good thing to do. By the way, this is my opinion on it. But I feel like even if we don't believe something, but it's positive, like I love myself, and I'm, I accept myself unconditionally, at least we're introducing a different narrative into our internal story. So if you've got a lot of like, I suck, and I'm the worst, and I'm no good. And a lot of that stuff in there. How in the world is that ever going to shift if there's not some other counter view that maybe tells you otherwise?
So I actually think it's really useful. When we work on affirmation, or we work on mantras, or we work on something like that. I think that can be a really good tool. But sometimes people might struggle to believe it. And so they don't even try or it just doesn't feel like it connects or resonates. Or they try doing it and then that critical voice pops in and immediately starts countering why none of that's true. And like here's the laundry list.
Everything you've ever done wrong, going back to that time that you were like four years old or something like that. It's amazing how long our memory can be when it comes to our what we would view as our faults and our mistakes and the things that we feel shame about.
What's amazing is that oftentimes you years later, nobody else is thinking about it. For the most part, nobody else is thinking about it. And we can still feel bad for something that happened way back when. Because our mind goes back to those moments in time, where oftentimes we feel like we wish we could have gotten a do over.
And we know we would have done it differently. And we didn't know at the time, what we know now. And we continue to rehearse those things, and there is a time where they're no longer useful. We have worked through whatever traumas there we've had the insights we've had the growth we've done as much as we can. And all that is happening with going back into old territory is rehearsing those neural pathways. And those old feelings that reinforce the message of I don't deserve good things, because of this, whatever that list is.
[15:56] Using color and nature to cultivate self-compassion.
So compassion is a way to intervene with parts of ourselves with negative messages with things that can feel a little bit rigid inside of us, and bring a gentle quality to it. And I love having a creative out of the box approach to self compassion, because often times I have found that if it is not our go to, to give ourselves compassion, and we're really struggling to think how can I love myself through this? How can I be kind to myself, that there are ways that we can open a side door and sneak a little bit of compassion. And that helps shift our energy, so that we might be able to come to a better place a better perspective of actually answering those questions.
So one of the ideas that I wanted to share today is working with color, and working with the idea of what color is compassion to you? What color if you put your hand on your heart, and just check in with your heart, take a few deep breaths, come into your heart chakra, come into your body, just kind of ask your heart, what colors compassion. And one of the things that I love about this exercise is that most people love colors.
Not everybody does. So if you're not a color person, you could change this to like what element in nature is compassion, you could be a little bit creative with it. But a lot of people really identify with colors they really speak to us. There's a reason we often have a favorite color, or there's color combinations that we find pleasing and ones that we don't find pleasing. I think colors hold their own vibration, they hold their own medicine. They hold their own Archetypal language and collective information about what a color means.
I think it's really fascinating to collect little books and Oracle card decks on colors. There is this card deck I have called the secret language of color by aina. Seagal it might be No, I'm not quite sure how to say it - Inna Segal. And it is one that I found years ago.
And I've loved it for a long time. I think it's lovely. Her interpretations of the colors are, they've always been they've always spoken to my heart. And it was one that when I needed a color boost. Back in the day, I would often draw a card of the day and then I would like tuck it into my purse or take it with me.
And I remember working with that deck and being like, what color do I need for healing today? I think that's a really self compassion question. And whatever color I pulled would be the color of the day that would kind of be my power color. And she broke colors down into fun things like apricot and you know different pinks and silver and you know, taking all the colors in the rainbow but at the same time breaking them down into the shades. So when we work with color, it's a way of very non threatening way to think about what color is compassion. And then we can take that color.
And we can imagine that we are wrapped in a bubble of light in that color. Maybe we might imagine that that color is in our heart and that is like very gently just kind of moving through us and a color that's infusing itself into our energy. We could wear that color if we wanted to. There's a lot of fun ways to do that. But I've often found that if somebody is struggling with self love and struggling with doing like a meditation or doing work around thinking about loving themselves that that we can come at it from a way of well, what colors compassion, what color represents compassion to your heart?
And can you imagine that color, gently kind of being with you being in you coming around you, and just being wrapped in the quality of compassion. And the way that I like to think about this is that sometimes if we are struggling to find something in us, then we bring the resource into us, if we haven't developed a big, well, a big hope, chest, self compassion inside of us a big apothecary cabinet where we've got all these tricks of self compassion. And maybe there are those who do.
And this will just add a few ideas. But for some people, the cupboard is bare, that is something that is hard for them. And so we have to bring things and that might represent compassion to us, and that we can meditate on and that we can tune into that energy, and help our nervous system and help our mind and help our senses help our body resonate with the idea of this is what compassion is, and have an experience of that inside of ourselves. Something else that I think is a lovely way to work with the idea of self compassion, is to tune into the messages of nature.
And this one's really fun, because when we talk about creative compassion, and thinking about it out of the box, again, oftentimes, we try and make ourselves think something, feel something, be something and almost like, raise ourselves up by kind of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps inside of us and expecting ourselves to get to that better place.
Or we could tune into nature, who is often already giving us messages about peace, and tranquility and harmony and letting go and acceptance and making space for the hole. And instead of pulling ourselves up into a better place, we just access something that's already giving us what we need. And we tap into that better place.
So when we're out in nature, or we're just thinking about nature, and we look up and look at the sky and think, what would the clouds have to say about how I'm feeling about myself today? What would the sky have to say? Is there messages from the sun today? Is there what would a tree have to say? And for some people, this might be really familiar language or something that feels really fun. For somebody else, this might be one of the first times that they've actually thought about something like that.
[22:48] Nature, creativity, and inspiring compassion.
But nature comes with so many messages that comes with so many medicines, it's not right or wrong. If something comes through for you. Oftentimes we question it, because we think, Oh, that's just my mind projecting ideas. It's just my imagination. But who's to say that you didn't have a felt sense perhaps of a message that nature had for you. And it doesn't really matter? What matters is that you observe and you take in whatever medicine you feel you're being offered.
So when it comes to creative compassion, I think flowers are lovely teachers of this. And I'll often think about what does the flower have to say, and I've actually written quite a few little poems about things the flower said, one of my favorite ones. This is a really short one. And I think it's in my revelations, the sky. But it just says, If alone flower can bloom in the middle of nothing.
So can you and I think there is something about seeing how life always finds a way, nature always finds a way that I find really redemptive. I find it really inspiring, you can absolutely try and destroy Mother Nature, and she'll still come back, she will still find a way to regrow life to bring something in to create something new, out of destruction or out of chaos.
And I think the message of compassion in there for me, is really about rebirth. It is about self belief. It's about not giving up on myself. It's about remembering that nothing's over until it's over, I guess until we're done with our human journey.
And then it's not over. It's the next next phase. It's the great adventure. It's what's behind the veil. But oftentimes when we are feeling in a critical, judgmental, depressed, low place, and we cannot access a sense of kindness for ourselves, I think tuning into nature, coming out that creatively looking at what message of compassion does nature have for me, and taking that into us like good matter? Send for the soul helps us soften it helps spring grace into that site, a part of ourselves, it may be just helps us to remember if we're going through something really hard that nature always finds a way Life finds a way. And I don't know how this is going to turn out.
But life will find a way to grow through this, I will find a way to grow, I've made it this far, I'm going to be okay. When we can get into the energy of compassion, the resonance, the vibration of compassion, we open up space to find our higher perspective, we're better able to access something like a positive thought and affirmation, we are more likely to be able to read a poem or a writing by a beloved teacher and actually resonate with it, and feel like we're getting something out of it, instead of really feeling closed off and defended.
So compassion opens. And nature often opens. And I love the idea of tuning into it. And the last idea that I wanted to share today was using our imagination as a creative way to bring compassion into us. And now the sky's the limit with this, right because it's your imagination.
And we can do anything with our imagination. But a couple ones that I really like is I will often just imagine water and how water flows through everything. And there's a sense of especially like soft water, like a really easy to until flowing stream.
And so sometimes I will just use imagining water, and imagining water kind of flowing through all parts of myself flowing through all areas in my life flowing through everything and reminding me that life is fluid, feelings are fluid, we are fluid, the river always finds its way, we always find a way to come back into flow, even when we have felt stuck.
And I will do that with a simple visualization of the water. We could use her imagination and we could sit down and we can draw out how do I feel right now I'm
going to draw my feelings, I'm going to color them, I'm going to do something artistically.
[27:18] Self-compassion through creative journaling.
And artistically doesn't mean it actually has to look nice. It just means using art, creativity, colored drawing, scribbling doodle and collaging clay Finger Paints something as an artistic medium, and I am going to express my feelings that way.
And then maybe when I'm done with that, maybe I'll express how I'd like to feel. Or I will perhaps use art to create Well, what would self compassion look like in this situation? So when we use our imagination and just ask our imagination, how can I come about compassion and a creative way? How can I use my imagination? How can I imagine myself feeling more compassionate towards myself? If we don't have that? Could you imagine a vision of being kinder to yourself in the future?
Could you imagine in an area in your life where maybe you struggle, and you are really hard on yourself? Could you imagine in the future, use your imagination, that maybe you start to see yourself going back into that same old language that you might use that is harsh.
And instead, perhaps imagine that you see a giant lightbulb go off over your head in that moment, and you say, Wait, here's a way to talk to myself kinder, and you actually imagine yourself doing it. And imagine yourself being more compassionate. Think about how you'd like to feel, think about who you'd like to become. Think about the behaviors, you're changing.
And imagine actually making those changes, seeing yourself do it a little bit differently, a little bit more gracefully, a little bit more kindly to yourself. So we can use our imagination. And again, the sky's the limit, but we can use it to come at the idea of self compassion, and some form of a creative way.
And ultimately, I think that is what creative compassion is all about. It is working on fostering the quality of compassion inside of ourselves, and allowing ourselves to think about compassion and a more out of the box way. It is moving away from whatever our ideal is of like, what is self compassion? That's a fun journaling question.
What is self compassion to you and just write down everything that you can think about self compassion, am I practicing these things? Where's this hard for me? Where might I need to work on developing it? What areas in my life? Can I use more compassion and writing is a fabulous tool to get in To our creative process, and could I write a letter of forgiveness to myself? Could I write a vision of how I might speak to myself in a more compassionate way? Could I write a script out of who I'd like to be.
So anytime we expand our relationship with something like compassion, with self empathy with forgiveness, and we stop thinking about it in such a concrete way, and allow ourselves to see it as a bigger construct, and to play with it a little bit, and to find fun ways to make it a little bit more joyful, make it a little bit more interesting. Bring the creative process. And when we're able to, the more I think we're able to grow that quality and our life, and it's a little bit more fun.
So a little bit more fun than just identifying negative self talk and replacing it with positive self talk. I love thinking about what color's my heart today? And if I'm not in a great place, thinking about what color is compassion right now, I love thinking about what message does nature have today.
And right now the sky is gray outside of me, it's a very, very gray day, it's not been sunny at all, and it's kind of a drab day. But I could just look at that right now and say what comes through with that question of what is nature have to say is that it's still part of nature's whole, like, even a drab day, it's just part of the natural process in nature. And so maybe that gives me a little bit more permission to forgive myself on a drab day or a day where I feel kind of gray. And just know that that's part of the whole of who I am.
[31:44] Self-kindness, final thoughts and coming up next week.
So I love coming out these things in an imaginative way. And it's really fun to share it. I hope this sparks some ideas for you. And hope this sparked a little bit more permission to continue to work on self kindness and self compassion, and creating a relationship with that that works for you.
With that, I will wrap up here for today. Thank you so much for joining me and the first of what I hope is many episodes of mental health toolbox. I'm excited to keep continuing this series in the future. But coming up next week, it is the first of the month.
And so we will be doing an Energy Update and looking at the month of March. And I will be talking about what the Akashic records have to say about the month of March. What's the energy, we will be bringing in a little bit of some of the astrology of March, we will be looking at the archetypes of March and what March has in terms of symbols and archetypes in the history of March.
And I hope just bringing in some really fun things that gives a bit of an energy forecast and also helps us continue to talk about archetypes and symbolism and how to live cyclically and live intuitively and work with the energy that is showing up for us and our lives.
With that thank you so much for joining me for this episode today. If you are enjoying your heart magic, please leave a review on whatever podcast platform you listen to. Those are liquid gold to me and good medicine for my heart to know that people are out there listening and enjoying thank you in advance. And until next time, be well. Be Love, be you and be magic.
You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life