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Compassionate Honesty by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn
Dr. Deb Compassionate Honesty –Isn’t That an Oxymoron?
By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.
“I have a mind of my own now, Jason,” Miri said with her nose pointed slightly upward. “You think you’re so smart! Well, you’re not. As a matter of fact – ”
Let’s just pause here in the middle of Miri’s attempt at being assertive.
Was this honest?
Well, I guess so.
Was this assertive?
Not necessarily.
Was it compassionate?
I’d have to say, “No.”
Combining compassion and honesty is not easy.
I used to teach couples to speak with assertiveness, and they often thought that stating their position in no uncertain terms as Miri did above was a great example.
It wasn’t.
It wasn’t because the idea in being assertive is not to build your own case by putting down someone else. Rather, assertiveness requires humanity. Compassion.
But I had a great deal of trouble helping couples be assertive in a kindly way that still made their case. Somehow, they felt at a disadvantage if they could not chop their partner down to make up for all the past times when they got cut down themselves.
And if there is any element of selfdoubt or de-valuing parts of yourself lurking in the hidden recesses of your soul, then you will not have the strength and courage to be fully compassionate; you will be in too much of a protective mode.
This explains why I fell in love with Internal Family Systems. The first steps in it are meant to teach people to love and value themselves first – even the parts of them that they would rather forget they had. Those are the parts that act defensive or aggressive or wimpy at moments when they wish they didn’t.
IFS makes the reasonable point that if this “part” of you came into being when you were just a child and therefore did the best you could creating a defense mechanism that would work for a child, then how can you blame yourself if it is a bit over the top or crude or illogical?
You have to come to appreciate the efforts made by that part of you to cope when it was awfully difficult and when you didn’t know better.
Look at it this way, Miri is trying to cope right now in a way that is not as, shall we say, polished as it could be. And she actually thinks that she’s come a long way.
Maybe Miri’s been in therapy working on her self-esteem, and it has, indeed, improved. But self-esteem can never be purchased at the price of putting others down. That is not a winning formula, although many therapists who work with an individual in a troubled marriage don’t realize the repercussions.
It is necessary first, in order to be able to communicate from that assertive and honest place, to acquire compassion. And it must begin with yourself. Only when you have compassion for yourself can you accept the flaws in your partner.
How do you do that?
We go back to how we relate to those parts of us that we may even be ashamed of. The question is: Can we start to appreciate and value those elements within ourselves? Because if we can’t, then we’ve got two problems:
Problem #1: When we are not fully accepting ourselves, we are not whole. To be whole, you have to love all of who you are – dark parts included.
Problem #2: If you can’t love and embrace all of yourself, you will never, ever be able to have a truly assertive conversation with someone whose parts can get under your skin. That’s because assertiveness not only includes the honesty and openness that you want but also the compassion and kindness necessary to be a fully functioning human being.
That means you will never get close again, never repair the marriage.
What I teach is a fascinating journey into your Self. Whenever you act in a way you wish you hadn’t, we explore where that part came from in your life and what its job is right now. The better you deeply understand the motives behind each part, the better you can accept it.
You can look at your parts as coping mechanisms. These, of course, are behaviors that simply react automatically to circumstances. Given a set of conditions, you might be triggered to react because those conditions once were toxic for you and you needed to protect yourself. The situation at the moment might not really be toxic at all, but your automatic brain doesn’t spend the time to evaluate, it just reacts.
For example, let’s return to Miri. Suppose we asked her to ask her part that put her husband down while trying to assert herself why it needed to go that route. We could listen in on her internal dialogue:
Miri [to part]: Can you tell me what your goal was when you kind of took over me and made me say, “You think you’re so smart! Well, you’re not, as a matter of fact.”
Part: I have to protect you! You know very well that Jason is opinionated and bossy. That has been the whole problem. Give him an inch and you lose your voice. You forget who you are.
Now, it becomes clear, doesn’t it?
It would be interesting to learn when in Miri’s life this part sprang into existence. As Miri falls silent thinking about her past, she suddenly sees her older brother running toward
her. He is just about to jump on her. The memory is frozen as he is in the air above her. She needs to act fast; she jumps quickly out of the way and he lands on the hard floor, crying. “Good for him,” she thinks. “Serves him right.”
Since she and her brother were left alone by a single mom who was struggling to help the family survive financially, Miri had to rely on her own smarts to come out safe. That was what we might call her “attack part.” It protected the vulnerable little girl who was frightened to be alone and had to depend on this aggressive brother.
When Miri married Jason, what she loved best about him was that he seemed to her to be a knight in shining armor, there to protect her from the world. The problem was that, in short order, his protection became dominance and she was once again in the same position she’d been in growing up.
Jason’s behavior, unfortunately, is what Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, calls an attachment re-injury. That is why her attack part just suddenly appeared. And it was so subtle that she probably didn’t notice as the words spilled from her mouth. Sometimes we need a third part to help us
notice our parts – and heal them.
So what would healing look like for Miri? (And Jason, for that matter.)
She’d have to: 1. realize that her attack part was the little kid she was when she had no other resources and therefore appreciate and value that part of her. 2. understand that beneath that attacking protector was a vulnerable child, and she’d have to be ready to hear the child’s pain. We can’t be fully capable of compassion for others if we can’t listen to our vulnerable parts with compassion. 3. she’d have to learn how to be in Self so that she can help that young
attacking part to grow and ease up because it could rely on her adult ability to handle things.
So, Miri is only getting started with her journey toward wholeness. She’s definitely on the road, though. After all, she knows that she needs to have a voice in the relationship, so she’s got about one-fourth of the honesty part done. The other three-quarters are recognizing her attacking protector and recognizing the vulnerable little girl that still hurts sometimes, as well as the fact that her husband’s dominance has also injured and hurt her.
And then the compassion piece of being totally whole and healed needs to be in place. For that, she must first embrace her nasty protector who did the best job it could, and then, even more important, accept the vulnerability inside her. She needs to admit and not be ashamed of this “weaker” part of herself.
Then she will be ready to accept her husband’s flaws with love and curiosity and have compassionately honest conversations.
Dr. Deb Hirschhorn is a Marriage and Family Therapist. If you want help with your marriage, begin by signing up to watch her Masterclass at https://drdeb. com/myw-masterclass.
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