Welcome, dear one.
One of the recurring themes or threads in the experience of humans I work with, as in mine, is the regret, guilt or shame that arises around persistent pain and other symptoms, or those aspects of our personality, identity or physiology that we’ve learn to think of as wrong, unacceptable, misguided, “dysfunctional” or “broken”, or that we’ve been told contribute to chronic pain. This can include the living legacy of past trauma, a highly sensitive or easily overwhelmed brain/nervous system, the “wrong” temperament, build, or personality traits, our “faulty wiring”, hypersensitivity, neurodivergence, and even our inner critic - so we judge ourselves or make ourselves wrong for judging ourselves or being too harsh. It can also include the choices we regret along our healing journey - the surgical or invasive procedures we opted for and their effects, the fact that we didn’t learn about, or refused to engage with, a mindbody approach sooner, the doctors we trusted, the voices we didn’t listen to.
In this section, I’ve put together a list of resources around the threads of self-acceptance, forgiveness and grief tending that might support you in relating to yourself differently in a way that can bring you towards liberation from suffering. Everything here is a practice, something we cultivate. In the beginning, it might feel very uncomfortable to engage with this content or practices - see if you can stay with it for a bit, noticing what arises with curiosity.
Grief tending
In my experience, anything and everything that arises around regret, guilt or shame comes with grief.
In this grief tending workshop, you might find the second gate section (tracks 7, 8, and 9) as well as the RAIN of self-compassion (track 13) particularly supportive. The full workshop is freely available, without any registration process.
You may also wish to explore this expressive writing practice for grief.
Forgiveness
A forgiveness library of resources by Tara Brach - the first thing you'll see is a link to two courses, but if you scroll down you'll find a section with talks, meditations and other resources
Forgiveness meditation by Jack Kornfield
Some resources from Sharon Salzberg:
A podcast episode on the foundations of forgiveness
Self Acceptance & Inner Critic
The Self Acceptance Project book, edited by Sounds True, compiles texts from different authors.
The Self-Acceptance Summit, also by Sounds True, includes interviews with 30+ teachers. This is a paid program (they used to have a free 12-video online series, but though it’s still listed the videos can’t be accessed anymore for some reason, maybe something wrong with the link).
Jan Chozen Bays, one of my dear teachers, has written a short article on the inner critic. The section about the inner critic and its three presentations in her book Mindful Eating is also wonderful. You may also enjoy a couple of her guided meditations:
Loving-Kindness toward the Body
Mindfulness Meditation on the Body with Gratitude
Lovingkindness and Self-Compassion
Lovingkindness, book by Sharon Salzberg
Radical Compassion, book by Tara Brach
To end this section, I’d like to share a brief note on how everything our bodymind has learned and done until now has been for a good reason. The history of our neural pathways, which includes years of evolutionary intelligence and intergenerational legacies, has enabled certain responses through no fault of ours. And we can grow in agency, we can learn and practice new pathways that will open up different choices in support of our healing and wellbeing.
May these resources be of benefit to you and those around you.