Compassionate Self-Awareness

There’s nothing wrong with you.

But doesn’t it feel like there is sometimes? Maybe even most of the time? Why is that? Where does it come from? Who taught you to think that way?

Have you ever asked yourself these questions?

If you grew up the in U.S., chances are you grew up in a society that measures your worth through what you can do, how intelligent you are, your appearance, how you make other people feel, and a host of other criteria.

Yikes! That is a huge burden to bear.

What is Compassionate Self-Awareness?

Compassionate Self-Awareness is a type of therapy that explores the origins of self-defeating self-talk, impossible expectations, and what we ultimately call your conditioning.

Think of conditioning like your human programming: Your social conditioning, your family conditioning, your relationship conditioning.

You and everyone else on this planet grows up learning how to live in the world based on limited training.

Being raised in a modern family, you have one or two primary models (your parents/guardians) of how to be in the world.

These models are often imperfect and expose you to only a fraction of what is true and possible in the world, but they install most of your initial programming. Despite their best efforts, your parents help condition you to be, feel and act in certain ways in the world that become known as your personality.

Or what you think is your personality.

This collection of skills, likes, dislikes, behaviors, fears, interests, and beliefs are all part of your conditioning that is supposed to help you function in society. And your conditioning is based on your parent’s beliefs, culture, social status, family background, and a host of other things.

All this information, rules, beliefs, etc. are the fabric of your personality, the things you should and shouldn’t do.

This programming is operating in the background. Your conditioning is always on and always influencing your decisions, your experience, and your beliefs about yourself and the world.

Compassionate Self-Awareness helps you learn to turn your attention inward and notice how your conditioning is operating. Through shining the light of awareness on your conditioning, you begin to change it, one thought at a time.

Watching your conditioning from a non-judgmental place, you begin to see who you really are beneath all the layers of ‘who you’re supposed to be’ according to your conditioning.

This is the beginning of freedom.

Compassionate Self-Awareness is a style of therapy that is active in nature and does require willingness to participate and explore who you are, how you’ve come to be who you are, and to challenge yourself to grow beyond yourself. This may feel like a spiritual path mixed with therapeutic guidance; and it can have a profound impact on how you see yourself, your loved ones and the world.