Compassionate Witnessing

Compassionate witnessing is one of the keys to emotional health and healing.

Present-day challenges:

If we are going through emotional events right now our feelings need to be witnessed, either by our self (Self energy) or by someone else. If we can unblend from the emotional part, validate the feelings ("I get why you feel that way- it makes sense), and show compassion, then the feelings can flow on and out. If we can't do that for ourselves, it can help to be witnessed by someone else with these skills. This can help us stay current in the moment, so we're not building up emotions that need to be dealt with later. And if we can do this kind of witnessing for others it can be helpful for them as well as for our relationships.

Triggers from the past:

It sometimes happens that our feelings persist over time, or they seem much bigger than the situation warrants. If that happens, there might be young parts that are reliving some past situation and getting triggered now. If we didn't have anyone to compassionately witness us then, the feelings might still be stuck in there. This can require the in-depth inner work I listed in the video. Here are some of the suggested steps I've learned by working with my own parts and those of my clients:

Compassionate Witnessing Steps

-notice all the feelings that are coming up. It might be that there are protectors worried about going to these painful memories and feelings, parts feeling anger about what happened (now AND then), parts afraid of big feelings, or parts that blank or distract us so we don't get overwhelmed. It can help to notice them all, listening to the anger, reassuring the scared parts that we will be able to handle the feelings (and we'll get some outside help if needed)

-once those upset parts or distracting parts are ok with us going to the young part, we can ask the usual questions for finding a part- where is the big feeling in your body? What emotion is it? Are there any images coming up? Any age we feel? What might this feeling or part be telling us?

-This is the time for compassionate witnessing. What memories might be coming up for this part? Ask the part what it was like being in that situation. The more we can remember what it felt like (from compassion of Self) the more we can witness and validate- "yep, those feelings make sense"," I'm sorry that happened to you".

-if we have the energy and time, we might also imagine doing a "do-over". If that part (that young you) had had a helpful adult or mentor there, what would they have wanted that person to do or say? What did they really need then? Once we have that information (we might even suggest some things-did you need someone to listen to you? Someone to get you out of that scary situation? etc), we can often imagine BEING that adult/mentor. We can imagine going in and helping exactly the way that part needed someone to do. That can often help take away any guilt or shame the part took in- it wasn't that they were bad, it's that they didn't have the resources they needed at the time. It can be really helpful for them to see how they SHOULD have been taken care of. And to see that now there's a you who can do that. This is called "memory reconsolidation" in the neurology literature, and it can help heal the hurt that was done in the past.

Next week we'll talk about the next step in unburdening these old memories and freeing the system from old beliefs and feelings they picked up in difficult past times.