Committing to Compatitude – Being with Compassion & Gratitude
As a human being and a Clinical Psychologist, I’d call myself a bit of a Magpie (also known as being “integrative” if I’m writing my CV): I like to explore multiple ideas and then take the bits which sparkle for me. I’ve experienced traumas in life, and I struggle with emotional pain and shame. I’ve worked with many people (as colleagues and patients) who are also struggling. Essentially, we’re all just trying to work out how to be our best selves and the ways of being which support us to do that.
My experience and the research tell me that, when trying to be our best selves, we don’t talk about shame enough. When shame and fear show up for me, my mind is strongly pulled to positions of fight or flight: rubbish the other person and tell myself they are unimportant and therefore this doesn’t matter (mind-fighting) or rubbish myself and tell myself I’m not important enough to even matter (mind-flighting). Shame pops up for us all: people living with physical and mental health conditions, those who struggle with perfectionism, and for anyone who has ever felt “less than” - it’s everywhere.
Some of our most painful struggles can be summarised in three simple ideas: shame (I’m not enough), scarcity (I’ll never have enough) and competition (I’ll never be enough). When thinking about how we manage these struggles, I’m most influenced by ideas from Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT). These therapies consider ways we can be more accepting and compassionate towards the minds, bodies and world we’ve found ourselves living in. Both also consider how we can be and act in order to enhance our lives and improve our psychological health.
I fully believe in the power of compassion (to self and others) and gratitude in supporting human beings to make space for, and minimise the detrimental impact of, shame, scarcity and competition. I also love a portmanteau (chillax, brunch, bromance, guestimate). So, when I thought about how I can enhance my commitment to being and acting with compassion and gratitude my mind gave me “compatitude”.
I like the power in the sound of the word. Compassion and gratitude can be thought of as “weak” or “soft”: they’re not. I also like the sense of attitude it brings. I associate attitude with being a little feisty – it describes a tenacity to behave in a way which demonstrates a personal value and it’s definitely not weak, soft or unimportant.
So, what is compatitude?
Compassion is noticing and responding to alleviate suffering in ourselves or others. Gratitude is about how we experience and express thanks for what we have. For me, Brené Brown summarises the importance of gratitude best when she says, “practicing gratitude is how we acknowledge that there’s enough and that we’re enough” (from Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead).
So, how do we live with compatitude? What does it look like? Compatitude is firstly about noticing, and then connecting and responding. How can we calm the shame-filled and critical voices which pull us away from compatitude living? How can we then act in a way which is not driven by shame, scarcity or “not enoughness”?
Sometimes the compatitude response to noticing is more about slowing down and not reacting: not fleeing or fighting in response to critical thoughts towards others or ourselves, or not trying to “compensate” for whatever inadequacies our mind tells us we have. We can’t just spend our lives doing nothing though: we need to be courageously acting in ways that support us to be enough, to strive towards our best and demonstrate we’re deserving of the life we choose.
Here are a few ideas about where we can start with compatitude:
When we notice an urge to flee or fight it can be hard not to react to this. We can use our imagination to develop and connect with a wise, all loving, caring “other”. This might take a human, animal or abstract form: whoever or whatever is able to fully support us in knowing and feeling that we are good enough, wise enough, strong enough (whatever-enough) in that moment. You can find more detail about how to develop this nurturing other on the Compassionate Mind Foundation website.
When we notice self-criticism or shame pop up, we can ask ourselves how we might speak to a loved one experiencing this right now. How would I help them through this? How would I want them to feel about themselves in this moment? Now we turn this on ourselves. I can ask myself, if I were standing opposite a struggling me right now, what would compatitude look like? Then we do it…
When our minds are shouting self-criticism or becoming too busy and overwhelming (I think of this as my gummi berry juice mind: bouncing everywhere), we can thank our minds with authentic gratitude. We can be thankful for having an incredible mind: it’s creative, imaginative, powerful and forever working for our survival. Our minds provide us with verbal, visual and emotional information. We can only choose how we respond to this data once we’re able to notice and process it. Saying a genuine thank you calms my gummi berry juice mind and allows me to gain a sense of perspective from where I can then make compatitude-based choices.
If you’re on social media (Twitter, Facebook or Instagram), follow #365daysofcompassion and @365dayscompass. You’ll receive daily inspirational quotes, ideas and experiences from others committed to living compassionate lives.
Start writing – keeping a daily gratitude record can support our minds with knowing we have enough: enough strength, enough wisdom, enough friends, enough achievements, enough health – enough whatever. As someone living with a health condition my mind can go full gummi berry juice when someone responds to my struggles with “at least you have your health”. Immediately my mind tells me: “No – you don’t”. That’s not the full story though: when calm, I have so much gratitude for the health I do have, for the NHS staff who work to keep me well, for the family and friends who support me, and to the experiences and knowledge I’ve gained from living with this health condition. It took a lot of compatitude to get there though.
Read or listen to any work by Brené Brown or Tara Brach. These are two women who have absolutely inspired me. I’m so thankful for their words and descriptions of how empowering and essential to our psychological health acceptance and vulnerability can be.
Compatitude isn’t easy - for so many reasons it’s not easy. Firstly, our minds are designed to detect threat. Secondly, we’re social beings and our minds try to protect us by making comparisons and minimising our chances of being rejected by those around us (don’t confuse shame and guilt though – the “whoops, I did something bad” is guilt: guilt is helpful and leads to repairing our relationships with others when we’ve made a mistake - that’s very different from “I am bad” or “I don’t deserve to be here”). Having a mind with an advanced threat detection system supports our survival and it means our minds need a lot of compatitude to feel safe, calm and genuinely worthy of being in the world.
I frequently direct my compatitude to the pure fact that I struggle to maintain compassion and gratitude in this mind, body and world I live in. The world tells us not be vulnerable, to aim high, to be the “best”, to not show “weakness” and that we can be everything and anything we want. In reality – that’s not true. Authenticity and thriving come from sharing vulnerability, achieving through courage and learning to fail: our self-worth and sense of achievement comes from all of these.
So, compatitude is a way of being – living a life with compassion and gratitude at the heart. Compassion and gratitude are powerful and meaningful concepts and they can have a big impact on our psychological flexibility and mental health. Although compatitude is a serious concept, it can also come with silliness. When writing this, my mind warmly connected with the TV series Miranda. Miranda is a beautiful example of valuing acceptance and silliness. Compatitude can be captured by asking (or singing to) yourself “what have you done today to make you feel proud”… or thankful … or silly … or connected … or valued: whatever sparkles for you and connects your mind with the warmth and strength of compatitude.