Well, truth be told, neither of us was passionate about Mindfulness or Self-Compassion at the beginning of our careers! It took us both a while to either “find it” (Lisa S, pictured left) or “get it” (Lisa K, pictured right), and our pathways to reach that point were our own, with bumps, twists, turns, missed opportunities and a good helping of pain and suffering along the way. We understand therefore that a journey towards this knowledge and these skills may not be a simple process and may not be a first-time success. People come to their own learning about Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) through many different pathways and via their own unique and very personal life journey.
So why are we passionate? Because this is really good stuff! It works for people. There is an ever-growing body of research describing the ways in which these skills make meaningful differences in people’s lives: by alleviating suffering, helping people to heal from trauma, by improving mental, physical and brain health, quality of life, and performance. There is also evidence in support of better quality relationships and longer life expectancy. We look forward to sharing more about the research evidence for those of you who may be curious about it or may be having “but, where’s your evidence” thoughts, in a future post! We love evidence too!
Having now benefited both personally and professionally from the enormous value these skills have brought into both our lives, we feel we have reached a point where you can’t “un-know the thing” and it has made us passionate about sharing what we value with others, both in and outside of clinic settings. A key proposition for us is that Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) is a way of understanding the self and navigating our life experiences, relationships and distress that is genuinely life-changing and should be accessible to all. Pain and distress is an unavoidable part of the human condition, but it does not have to be a foregone conclusion that we must therefore also experience suffering in response to it. There is another way.
We are well aware that we are by no means the only people to have come to this realisation. We are definitely not the most well known, and we are certainly not the only capable and skilled people offering opportunities to learn and practice these skills. We applaud you and celebrate you if you are among the community of providers already delivering MSC opportunities to others, through teaching, resources, therapy or media communication. We offer our gratitude to you if you have been a part of our own learning journeys - or developed some of the wonderful resources that assist us to do our work every day; you are wonderful, thank you! Likewise we celebrate with you if you have been on a journey already with MSC and have adopted what you have learned into your own life. We would love to hear more about how MSC has made a difference to you. Start a conversation below!
What WE bring, along with our lived experience, is our wealth of experience as clinical psychologists who have worked respectfully, authentically and compassionately with countless people across a very broad demographic at their darkest and most vulnerable moments, as they travel this road. We also bring broad and in-depth industry experience in training and supervising professionals in health, education and research settings, in clinics, schools and universities, community groups and more. We are passionate about seeing more people in helping and service professions especially, succeed in life (whatever that may mean to you) and work, with the tools to avoid or recover from burn-out and maintain their capacity, for “showing up” in their own lives. We want to see people find a healthy and meaningful balance between work and life. We want to be part of the solution to the exodus of early and mid-career professionals leaving the professions they worked so hard to join.
If reading this has made you even a little bit interested to learn more, we invite you to consider signing up for our FREE webinar: Introduction to Mindful Self-Compassion, coming up on February 29th ( hey, it’s leap day! It’s got to be good right? What have you got to lose!) Register HERE. A recording will be available after the event.
Get to know us, learn more about MSC, and gain new skills. We hope to see you there.
Lisa S and Lisa K
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