Neurodivergence, Shame, & Self-Compassion
Self compassion is a facet of a Prism.
In the midst of shame, turn the other way and watch the light come in, through you. You’re suddenly illuminated – the whole of you — the grappling, the mistake, and the pressure behind the mistake. Each aspect that weighs on you is lit up — each person involved, the layered dynamics, the history that led here. Within this context, you can understand your actions.
In this moment your truest, most vulnerable self is clarified. You suddenly have a wave of emotion for what you’ve put yourself through. You’re not rationalizing or justifying. You’re seeing yourself as the sacred yet flawed human being that fucked up but did so honestly and painfully.
In this way, self-compassion can come in a moment — letting the light shed on you, unexpectedly.
Or you can bring it forward, you can do practices and rituals to hone the skills of witnessing your own pain, as if an objective party appreciating what you carry. You can learn to weave it into your life more. To find small moments of suffering, and simply recognize them. You can start to have dual attention — being both in the experience of the shame and an outside witness, saying: “it is not the whole of me, but a feeling passing through me.”
Self-compassion is the crescent of a dog’s belly, offering itself to you, void of all judgment. Self-compassion is a holding — like two arms coming together around your experience, letting it be. We let the anxiety, shame, embarrassment, or failure relax, rather than avoiding, or pushing them away. When you accept and are here with your experience, it can breathe and rest.
Shame, Trauma, and neurodivergence
“History, language, context, and power are deep determinants of who gets framed as ‘normal’ or ‘wrong.’ Sensitivity and sensitive women in particular have been no exception. The history of language within medicine and science has corrupted our notion and felt sense of what it means to be sensitive and thereby pathologized sensitivity and created an epidemic of shame among some of humanity’s most gifted individuals. Let the reeducation begin.”
—Jenara Nerenberg, Divergent Mind
For “high functioning” neurodivergents, the harmful effects of being disabled in an ableist society go underground. We make our disability invisible. We suffer on the down low: in our rooms or our cars, by ourselves, maybe to a close friend or a parent. A major manifestation of invisible disability is chronic shame, which can also look like anxiety and depression.
Part of the shame we feel is a reaction to expectations and beliefs about how we should be in an ableist culture. As neurodivergent people, we are exposed to implicit and explicit societal messages that our ways of thinking, perceiving, and working, are not as good as the mainstream.
We often look out at the world and find ourselves acting and reacting differently — whether it’s slower or faster, more intense and with greater depth, more emotional, and with executive functioning challenges, fatigue, or chronic pain. We internalize ableism from a young age, believing we are bad or wrong, feeling our difference and believing it makes us less than, not enough, or too much.
Additionally, almost without exception, in addition to experiencing capital T traumas, neurodivergents have experienced chronic “lower t” traumas — repeated, everyday experiences of exclusion, rejection, chronic invalidation of our emotions (leading to self doubt, lack of trusting ourselves and our intuitions).
When we come up against perceived or real failures, perceived or real mistakes, and perceived or real rejections, this triggers a deeply seated false message to us telling us we’re no good.
Mechanisms of SHAME AND SELF-BLAME
Shame
Shame tells us “I am at fault.”; “I am bad through and through.”; “It was me who failed.” When we’re in this shame state, we lose all perspective and even a small mistake becomes evidence that “I’m a terrible person.” It can be manifest as harsh critical voices, weakness in the body, nausea, bursting into tears, feeling you’re terrible and wrong and not good enough. You can lose all ability to focus. It can derail you for hours, or for days. It can make you feel lonely, and make you question if life is worth living.
The Buddhist Concept of the First and Second Arrows
A concept in Buddhism tells us that the First Arrow is the unavoidable pain of life. First arrow experiences include stress, loss, physical pain, illness, death, aging, physical danger, insecurity around finances, food, and housing, and so on.
The Second Arrow is the suffering that we add to it. Self-criticism/self-shaming is part of the second arrow. Other second arrow states are blaming others, and things that we do to attempt to have control or avoid feeling pain (even though the second arrow adds pain anyway).
Self-Critics Come in Different Flavors
FIGHT: We chide ourselves, sometimes quite harshly, as if yelling at ourselves. Sometimes it manifests as a disregard for ourselves.
FLIGHT: We flee our bodies – avoiding or cutting ourselves off from our body and emotions. We distract ourselves. We ignore ourselves and what we need. It is as if we are giving ourselves the silent treatment, estranging ourselves from ourselves.
FREEZE: A self-disgust. A self-loathing. A feeling of being completely alone. Or simply a numbing.
Self Compassion is the Antidote to Shame
Shame and isolation make you question if life is worth living. Self-compassion is literally a life line.
What it means to be self-compassionate is to notice, to see. To give attention is loving. To put a hand on a place that hurts is nurturing.
Self-compassion is tenderness, softening, and giving safety. In self-compassion, even though we are by ourselves, we give and receive care and begin to feel less alone with ourselves.
We are un-abandoning ourselves. We feel cracks in us open to the love that is around us. We are meeting ourselves. We are tending to ourselves. We are connecting to ourselves.
practice self-compassion
Mindful Self-Compassion Steps:
STEP 1: PAUSE.
STEP 2: FEEL INTO THE BODY.
When your inner critic or shame is triggered attend to what happens in your body: (i.e. tension, increased heart rate, nausea, deep knot in the belly, constriction in the throat, weakness or numbness all over, tearfulness).
STEP 3: IDENTIFY THE SHAME NARRATIVE.
Identify the story that comes up for you. (What’s wrong with me? I’ll never get it right. No one makes as many mistakes as I do.)
Remember: what a shame story communicates to you is not the truth of who you are. Your identity is far wider and more expansive than the narrow, shame-based identity that goes with that false story.
STEP 3: WITNESS.
Bring your inner witness to the energy in your body. Whatever energy is in the body is fine — allow it. The simple act of bringing attention can regulate/modulate the feelings/anxiety. Welcome a sense of ease, spaciousness.
STEP 4: SOFTEN.
Can you soften, can you bring kindness and compassion to all of it? Put your hand on your belly which communicates to the nervous system safety. We welcome slowing down, tension easing, and belly softening.
STEP 5: BREATHE INTO THE SPACE WHERE YOUR ATTENTION IS MOST NEEDED.
See if you can breathe into the most difficult place in the body where shame is experienced. Watch and feel how the energy in your body changes. We don’t need anything to change, but we welcome it if it does. We are simply being an ally with ourselves, meeting ourselves where we are.
STEP 6: GIVE AN OFFERING TO YOURSELF
Put a hand to your heart. If tenderness feels too much or too hard, wrap yourself in a blanket or give yourself a hot cup of coffee or tea.
A NOTE ON TENDERNESS: (Self Compassion Bite Sized)
Tenderness is scary, intense. It can bring up a lot in the body. You can offer it to yourself it in tiny bits:
Can I place my hand on my heart ever so slightly, for just one second at a time. Experiment.
What would I need to do for my body to be 1% more comfortable in this moment? What would I need to do to soften the tension in my body 1%?
Can I bring in just a bit of kindness, ease, tenderness to this?
Gaining distance FROM THE SELF
Take a step back and look at yourself. It can be powerful to see yourself as if you’re a third party observing what you are going through.
Notice your vulnerability and humanness.
Notice the intensity, integrity, and effort with which you try, show up, and give effort.
Watch the person who is having the thought that she is a failure, or is not good enough. What do you feel for her?
What would a beloved relative (alive or dead), partner, friend, or animal say to you or do for you in this moment?
when you believe you’re not worthy of compassion.
Simply holding the intention to be kind to yourself makes a difference: “I have the intention to make space for myself.”
Simply stopping, and bringing awareness to yourself in this moment, has a built in tenderness to it.
Come into self-compassion through giving to your beloveds. When you make space and give care to yourself, it helps you to do so for your loved ones.
Examples of What to Say to Yourself
Suffering is a part of life
This is a moment of suffering
All beings suffer — I’m not alone in this.
May I be kind to myself
May I accept myself as I am
May I love myself
(inspired by the work of Kristin Neff)
Self-Compassion Writing Prompts
In self-critical moment observe yourself through the eyes of someone who loves or has loved and sees you as your best self. This can be a parent, living or deceased relative, partner, pet or animal, friend, former teacher or mentor. What would they say? How would they look at you?
Journal on the child-you that was alone with shame. Maybe her or she was sitting on the playground and felt left out. Maybe her or she felt weird, or like his or her parents were ignoring or yelling at him or her. Maybe she was struggling with being late yet again, or saying the wrong thing and beating herself up. How would you feel for her? Imagine the little you. What did he or she feel, what did she or he look like, what were the sounds, smells, and sights around him or her?
What would the adult-you say or do to offer the child-you compassion and love?