How Self-Compassion Turns Perfectionism Into Presence

I need help coaching people in terms of everyday mindfulness, sprinkling it into the routine. So people who are overwhelmed and especially neurodivergent who create this wall of perfection or obsession in order to do it right. Yeah. So in terms of coaching people with everyday mindfulness and who are overwhelmed or neurodivergent, I think so, first of all, safety is really important for people who feel overwhelmed or who are neurodivergent or who are perfect perfectionists. Honestly, I would probably start with self-compassion practices. You know, and mindfulness is self-compassion in the sense that we're tending to ourselves with gentle care

if we're feeling a sense of stress, tightness, control, self-compassion, and you know, mindful self-compassion can kind of help us to soften and to notice sense of right or wrong, good or bad. You know, mindfulness is not about judging things to be good or bad, right or wrong, but rather we learn how to kind of reframe it in terms of say pleasant or unpleasant. So noticing judgments of good or bad, right or wrong, and can we feel like the say the harshness of judgment itself? Like, oh, yeah, there's a sense of tightness or disconnection that happens when there's judging. Can I reframe it into like sensations of judging being pleasant or unpleasant? Or what are the sensations of right or wrong, tightness,

disconnection? What's the underlying fear underneath it? Because usually there's a fear that leads us to judging. So I would start with a variety of self-compassion practices to help people soften a little bit. Mindful walking is such a wonderful practice where it's a very valid form of meditation where we sense into the bottoms of our feet touching the ground. Heel arch toes, heel, arch toes, heel, arch toes, and really just connecting with the actual felt sensations of the bottoms of the feet as we walk. Can I feel the socks? Can I feel the padding of the shoes? Can I feel the gravel? Can I feel mud? You know, like whatever it is. Like, can we feel the pressure? Am I a little bit walking on the outside

of the foot or the inside? Am I kind of up on the toes a lot or the heels? Is it a pounding or is it kind of a soft, fluid walk? Am I upright? Am I leaning? How is my breathing compared with each footstep? So mindful walking is usually a great way to integrate mindfulness into daily life. Same with mindful standing. Again, connecting with the breath. Usually can't go wrong with the breath. So sensing into how we're breathing as we walk, as we talk, as we sit here. And that, you know, giving them choice. Here are five practices that you can choose, you know, what you want to do today or in this moment. Which one feels juicy, exciting, interesting, your favorite? You know, people usually like choices. Like, oh, I want to do that today. I want to try this right now. That seems kind of interesting. And offering practices that are like pleasant, like, you know, like five things I can see, five colors I

can notice, five things I can smell. Those are kind of like interesting, usually. You know, self-compassion practice tends to be a little bit unpleasant, even though it's like based in care. The premise is that there's some form of suffering to be compassionate for. So that can be unpleasant, but it also can be really juicy and interesting at the same time. But anyway, having sort of a variety of practices, like some somatic, some heart-based, some air ear or nose or taste-based. Like here's three pieces of different kinds of chocolate. Let's bring mindfulness to chocolate tasting. Or here's top water, here's sparkling water, and here's fancy water. Let's do mindfulness of tasting waters. You know, finding kind

of fun, interesting things to do that help us to cultivate present moment awareness. Those are just a few ideas. But I do encourage a lot of trauma sensitivity with the populations that you're talking about. And we do offer a trauma sensitivity course, co-taught by David Trelevin, who wrote Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, and Christopher Germer, who was the co founder of the Mindful Self Compassion Program. And Willoughby Britton, who is one of the researchers of at Brown University, of the sort of adverse side effects of mindfulness on certain populations. So I hope that's helpful.