Compassion Group Notes - July 2023
Passive/Aggressive/Caretaking
Rules of Groups
We all grew up in families and organizations that were externally focused on achievement, not internally focused on self-knowledge. And we all grew up with systems that adhered to very dysfunctional rules to ensure that everyone “looked good on the outside,” not matter what was going on on the inside. As we embark on the inner journey of self-knowledge and self-awareness, the rules change for how to interact with ourselves and others. In order to understand a new world order, we must first understand and see how the rules we grew up with do not serve us any longer on the inner journey. We have only one rule in our groups really and that is “RESPECT.” We need to honor and respect all the relationships we have with ourselves internally, which then ripples into respect to others as well.
In dysfunctional systems:
We focus on others instead of ourselves
We speak for others instead of ourselves
We gossip, control, rescue and fix others instead of ourselves
We caretake other people’s needs and feelings instead of tending to ourselves
We form alliances with people against other people, instead of having an inner alliance with ourselves
We get in the middle and become a spokes person for others, instead of being on our own side
We caretake others, instead of being caring to our own wounding internally
We are judgmental and critical of others, not realizing this is how we treat ourselves
We aggress against and blame others, instead of introspecting about our own responsibility in relationships
We transgress others boundaries, because internally we transgress our own boundaries that keep us safe, valued and loved
We cannot find empathy for the other, because we have none for ourselves
We feel entitled and demanding that others give us the respect and love we fail to give ourselves
We elevate or devalue others, because that is our own inner relationship with ourselves
We are never honest about our own feelings and needs, but analyze, correct and meet everyone else’s feelings and needs.
If there is an issue, we sweep it under the rug and pretend everything is fine
There are many more that we could talk about, but for now, examine each and see if you can see it in yourself in the month ahead - not to judge it but to see it and enquire deeply into the motive that drives these “rules and norms,” of conduct in your external world. Ask yourself how you learned this way of being in the world. And examine carefully the consequences of living out of these rules and norms now.
Shame is a locomotive driven by coal.
It gets your from point A -B, polluting the air and environment on the way. ~Lyndall Johnson
Fear and Avoidance of external pain and discomfort
Trying to get away from the fears of physical discomfort and pain, instead of accepting and holding them when they arise, correlates directly with the ways in which you try to avoid and run from your inner emotions and needs. Pain is inevitable in life. We do not have to seek it out, but when it visits, the only way to be with it, is to BE WITH IT. This is the practice of com-passion - com meaning with, passion meaning love. BE WITH IT, WITH LOVE. This is our opportunity to practice presence to the inner fears, the old needs of childhood, the distorted thoughts we developed, so as to transform and integrate them into the BIGNESS of who we are now. We are not little anymore. We can do now what we could not do then.
“Remember rainbow jello?
You must know all the layers, colors and textures of your own jello.”
~Charisse Lyons
See if you can label all the parts in any given circumstance
What is not in awareness will be brought with into the future which will not be as you expected in your fantasies, but a repetition of the past.
Expectations
“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”
~Charlotte Brontë , Villette
What you angrily expect of others, is a projection of what you demand of yourself and fail to live up to within.
