So, I’m not a huge Oprah fan.
I’m not saying she shouldn’t be respected, because — dayum — the woman has built herself an empire from the ground up. And I’m not saying that I don’t occassionally tune in. But for the most part, I don’t really agree with what I hear on her show.
But I watched something the other day that really did make me stop and think. And you all know that if I think, you’re gonna hear about it.
Oprah did something for some women because they had hard lives or whatever. (As you can see, I was clearly flipping back and forth between her and Judge Mathis.) So they were at this resort thingie, and having their round table cry-outs, when someone said something that really stuck with me..
She said that we, as women, too often confuse self-pity for self-compassion. Stop and think about that.
Now I, personally, had never heard of the term “self-compassion”. I had only heard of “self-pity”, and it was something I would never, EVER allow myself. No matter how hard things got, or how tired I was, or how badly life sucked, I would never allow myself to stop and acknowledge it.
Self-compassion, as it turns out, is what I was neglecting myself there. It’s an opportunity to embrace your sorrow/sadness/exhaustion/etc to a limited capacity, allowing you to move on from it a more complete and solid individual.
So, you know, rather than just being bitter that life sucked for that point in time, you can look back and say, “Yep, that sucked. Thank God I’m past it now.”
And I’m not saying that this phenomenon is exclusive to women, or that ALL women practice it. But how many women do you know that suffer any extent of tragedy in their lives, and insist on pressing on? I know dozens. We do this because we don’t have time to stop. We don’t allow ourselves the privilage of grieving.Â
Just a random thought I wanted to share with all of my female readers out there. When something really sucky happens, take some time to come to terms with it. Don’t wallow in it, obviously.. that’s where crazy starts.. but let yourself grip the reality of it before pressing on.
Maybe Oprah will take me on one of those thingies next time.
I record Oprah and I just went back and watched this one. You are so right, I never thought of it that way. I don’t think very many women allow themselves to have self-compassion and I know I don’t.
Did you catch the part about forgiving? She said not forgiving someone is like taking poison everyday and hoping the other person would die. That is so true, I am going to work on forgiving because I don’t need that stress in my life!