Coming Home to Self: Finding Self-Compassion and Self-Love in Psychotherapy.

Abstract

Love as an emotion is a deeply rooted one. Being felt in differential ways, it withholds a great potential to unravel deep-seated trauma and a gamut of emotions in the context of psychopathology in psychotherapy. Clients often seek therapy as a means to treat their symptoms or manage their mental and emotional health. However, the process of psychotherapy opens up layers of past history around being loved that determine a client’s present belief systems around love, being loved or loving someone. What often gets lost is the question of self-love. While client may come with presenting complaints of lack of confidence, feeling inferior to others, it takes great skill as a therapist to acknowledge the lack of self-love the client has for him/herself. Research suggests that as children we internalise our parents’ conversations which later become our internal self-talk in our mind. The criticality or kindness offered in these scripts, in addition to the lack or the presence of love received greatly determine an individuals’ love for themselves. Self-compassion as a psychotherapeutic approach has been found to heighten people’s physical and mental well-being with an emphasis on an unconditional acceptance of oneself as they are. The current chapter aims at understanding love through different theoretical perspectives, its link with psychopathology and how it presents itself with other emotions. Selected case examples have been utilised to emphasize on the healing properties of compassion-based therapy with clients from an Indian background and its role in alleviation of symptoms.