When Life Feels Heavy: A Practice in Self-Compassion

Sometimes life just feels like a lot.

In this episode, I reflect on a moment of feeling downtrodden, and share what helps me when the instinct is to push through.

✧ We explore

– Naming and normalising moments when everything feels like a lot

– A short guided practice to help you slow down in real time (6:17–9:38)

– The RAIN framework as a steady way to meet difficult emotions

– Building steadiness through self-compassion

✧ A question for you

What are you carrying right now?

What would it look like to respond to yourself with care?

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Thanks for listening! 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Your soul craves something more. Your heart wants joy, not busyness. You're done with all the shits and ready to reconnect with what truly nourishes you. Welcome, I'm Rachel, and this is the Soft Way Podcast. A space to quiet the noise, release the pressure, and listen to the voice within you that's always known your truth. Join me for soulful practical insights to help you ground into presence, connect with your higher self, and let this version of you lead your life with playfulness and gentle power. And without the pressure to figure it all out. Because you are supported. Life is with you. So come on home. Hello. Hi, welcome. Hope you are doing well over there wherever you are in the world. So I did have a plan for today, for today's episode, and then I was feeling into my own sort of experience and what felt real and present for me, and so I've decided to go in a slightly different direction to what I'd planned. And my intention for this episode is to offer you some gentle guidance to support yourself if things are feeling a bit heavy or challenging. It does happen to be Mercury retrograde at the time of this recording. So it's possible if you're listening before the 20th of March, you're feeling some heaviness. Um, I mean, yeah, it could be related to the astrology or or other things. So, what have I been noticing? So today I've been noticing for myself just this feeling of well, the word that kept coming up was downtrodden. So a few things were piling up in my mind. One being just the monotony of day-to-day life, this sense of joylessness, and then on top of it, there was an awareness of all these other aspects of life that are feeling challenging for me at the moment when I think about them. And so I just noticed this sense of weightiness, this feeling that life is heavy, it's demanding a lot of me, and I'm not really getting much back in return. So sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but that's what I felt today. And maybe if you are someone who feels a lot emotionally, maybe you're quite sensitive, highly sensitive, or maybe you've just got a lot on your plate and maybe a lot of responsibility, a lot of logistical, practical things that are piling up. So if you fall into one of those camps, or maybe it's just a momentary thing, but when life feels heavy, our instinct is often to just push through or to fix whatever it is that we feel is broken. Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, none of what I say here is going to be a surprise. Um, but yeah, my invitation is to slow down instead of pushing or fixing is to slow down and respond to yourself with care. And as I sit here and I say that I've been feeling downtrodden, I know that it's a transient state, and that tomorrow I'm probably going to feel quite different. But I thought it was worth mentioning because there's often these kind of things that are chronic and ongoing that bother us, maybe more days than others, or things that happen suddenly, or things that come into our conscious awareness in certain moments, and just feel like maybe heavy or tight, or whatever it is, and what I'm finding helpful in those moments is the simple act of giving myself space to feel, the simple act of pausing and acknowledging how I feel. So not necessarily going into some sort of blaming mode or victim mode, but just naming this is how I feel. And also being present to the experience, a sense of being with those feelings. Rather than staying on the mental level of okay, I've got to do this, I have to do that, and this is how I can fix it, or this is how I can be a better person or feel better. Just slowing down, acknowledging what's here, and then fully feeling it. So if you're able to just allow yourself to be still for a moment, letting go of any kind of multitasking, and just noticing what's in your experience right now. Noticing how you're feeling or how you've been feeling. And seeing if you can feel where it's showing up in your body the most. Maybe even placing a hand somewhere on your body, maybe wherever it's is manifesting most strongly. Or somewhere else, like the heart or the hands. Breathing with the sensation, breathing with the emotional. I just want to encourage you if you are feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, or there's something that's stoking the fires of anxiety within you. Just letting this be a space of nurture today. Also a space where you get to remember that you're not alone. This feeling, these things, these emotions are just part of what is a bumpy ride for all beings on this planet. Something that's been helpful to me in this sense of meeting my experience fully is a practice called Rain. And I discovered this through a book called Radical Compassion by Tara Brack. And the value in this practice for me was the simplicity of it and the simplicity of how it guides one through the process of slowing down. So I'm just going to describe very briefly here what the practice is, and I recommend the book if you haven't already got it. So R is recognize. So for example, today I recognized I was feeling downtrodden. That's it, just knowing all your experiences and acknowledging it, recognizing it, labeling it. And A is allow. So you're just allowing your emotions, your feelings, allowing your experience to exist, to be what it is. And when we do that, there's this sense of spaciousness, there's this kind of gap that we're creating. So not looking for solutions or criticizing. Just this kind of space of allowing. Noticing how this feels. So not just giving space to it, but also with your attention, scanning the experience, being present to the experience, moment to moment. This curiosity that comes without any pressure to find answers or fix anything, just this watchful eye. And then N is nurture. And this is where we can bring in this calm, caring, perhaps maternal energy. And a question that I always find helpful for nurture is what do I need? What do I need in this moment? And it might just be as simple as I need to sit down. Far away from my computer. I need to express what's going on in my mind through journaling. I'm speaking to a friend. So there is a space of acknowledgement, acceptance, and then this movement towards care. And that nurture piece can be really subtle. There's no right or wrong. So some people might feel like they don't know how to be nurturing toward themselves, or they don't know what they need. There's so many things that they need, or maybe they're just so used to thinking about what they need to do rather than what they need. But I find that just turning toward your experience with the intention of care, even if you don't know how to be nurturing or know what you need, can be really helpful. And this isn't about indulging yourself, it's about stabilizing your state of being. So that you can respond from that stability instead of from a place of depletion or defensiveness. So releasing the habit of ignoring ourselves or blaming ourselves or others in moments of difficulty, slowing down, turning toward, and being a caring presence toward ourselves. Just this reminder that whatever it is, there is something feeling heavy and a lot, if you're feeling downtrodden or any other word that describes what feels like a really challenging state of being, you get to allow yourself to feel this way. And you don't have to fix everything, you don't have to be the perfect person. Just for this moment, you can slow down. You can allow yourself to feel. And you can play with or feel into an intention to be caring toward yourself. And that is enough. Every time we meet ourselves in this way, instead of ignoring or criticizing, we're building inner steadiness and groundedness. That may not remove the heaviness, may not make everything shiny and wonderful, but it certainly changes our relationship to those things that are challenging, create some breathing space. Before I close, just a little request here. This podcast is very new, as you know, and so if this episode felt supportive, if you enjoyed it or if you've been enjoying this podcast, one really simple way to support this work is by just leaving a rating. Alright, well that is me for today. Thank you so much for listening and just remember you are doing it, you are doing life, and things are changing, even if they don't always look like it. And you being a conscious and aware person is so important to the world, for your happiness, for your growth, and for all of us. So thank you so much once again, and I will speak to you hopefully next week. Take care.