How to Make Grace-Filled Compassion Your Go-To Reaction

My app says, “Your order is ready for pick-up!”

But there is no tall extra-whip mocha for Cheri on the bar.

I glance from my cell phone to the Starbucks counter and back again, as if looking back and forth will cause my drink to magically appear.

And then I see it.

I’m standing in the Starbucks on the corner of Main Street and Colorado Avenue.

My order is ready for pick-up at the Starbucks on the corner of Main Street and Coronado Avenue.

It’s only ten minutes away, but I’m already running late for one last visit with my father before making the 8-hour drive from my hometown in southern California to Santa Cruz County where I’ve lived for almost twenty years.

My visits “home” are so infrequent, I don’t want to waste half an hour dashing down the road to pick up a mocha that will be cold by the time I get to it.

I take a deep breath, place a new order, and soon the barista is calling out “tall extra-whip mocha for Cheri!”

While I try not to do the math.

The Voice of Self-Compassion

As I walk to the car, my Inner Critic starts in on me:

“I can not believe that you just wasted perfectly good money on … A truly responsible human being never would have … “

But another voice — a warm, calm, gentle voice — interjects:

“You must be so very tired to have made a mistake like that.”

My eyes begin to sting. I blink hard, trying to prevent the dam from breaking here in the parking lot.

It’s been good to spend time with my father over these last two weeks. But staying in the house I grew up in — the house my mother designed and decorated — is always disorienting for me.

The new voice speaks again with quiet conviction.

“You are not the kind of person who recklessly spends $10 or wastes a perfectly good mocha.”

And now I recognize:

This is a sign. This is a sign of how very tired I am. This is a sign of how much tenderness and gentleness I need today.

For a girl whose brain has been urging her to Just try harder for so many decades, this moment of spontaneous self-compassion is nothing short of a miracle.

And another one is on the way.

The Gift of Self-Compassion

As the day wears on, I experience in real time something I read about several years ago but couldn’t quite believe:

• “Neuroscience research shows that developing self-compassion leads to feeling compassion for others.” (Barking Up the Wrong Tree, pg. 196)

I find that each time someone does something that grates on my nerves, the irritation that rises up within me is promptly met by the new voice:

 Oh, I think that’s a sign. That’s a sign that they’re very tired today. That’s a sign that they need extra tenderness and gentleness today.

The two things that stun me most:

First, it works. As I recognize the other person’s annoying words or tone of voice or actions as a sign that they need extra tenderness and gentleness, my irritation dissolves into compassion.

Second, it requires no effort. I do not force any of it. No white-knuckling. No “just choose joy!” No “attitude of gratitude.”

It’s pure gift.

Which helps me see 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 NIV in a new light:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our troubles,
so that we can comfort those in any trouble
with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

Why HSPs Need Self-Compassion

Self-compassion, I’m discovering, has so little to do with me.

Which is such a relief.

For most of my life, I avoided the whole concept of self-compassion because of the dangerous prefix “self-” at the start — those of us with perfectionism and/or legalism in our backgrounds know what that can lead to!

But the “self-” in self-compassion doesn’t mean I make it all about me — it just means that I’m included.

If you’re like the Highly Sensitive Christian women I hang out with, you’ve spent your life extending empathy and compassion and grace to everyone … except yourself.

So a simple working definition of Self-Compassion might be “intentionally and fully embracing God’s gift of grace for myself.”

Your Inner Critic insists that God’s grace is for everyone but you. 

Self-Compassion says that God’s grace is for you too.