Fierce self-compassion: how coaching can help us sustain our support for our loved ones
The National Autistic Society recently reported that autistic people and their carers face #a constant fight: for assessment for diagnosis (with an estimated 400,000 waiting over a year for their first contact with a health service, (Children’s Commissioner Report, 2024: 36)), for school support, for EHCPs. Parents and carers I speak to tell me how exhausted they are. Exhausted from having to take time off work to take children to appointments; having meetings with schools; chasing people for support; form-filling; from constant advocacy for their young people, and weathering judgments from people who cannot understand or empathise with their situations. The fight is compounded by a system that deflects the problem back to the parent/child/family rather than looking at the system itself (see Running and Jata-Hall’s report, 2023 – 87.8% of parent / carers respondents said they felt blamed for some aspect of their autistic child’s presentation). As Heidi Mavir so eloquently describes in Your Child is not Broken (2023), this constant ‘fight work’ can be really triggering for neurodiverse parents who find that their neurodiversity is positioned as a problem.
For wearied parents and carers every day is continually filled with fighting battles on a number of fronts. So how can the fight be sustained?
Whilst it’s not a complete answer, I really like Kristen Neff’s concept of fierce self-compassion as a foundation to build principles to support the #constant fight. Neff, herself the mum of an autistic son, developed this concept after reflecting on an exchange with a judgmental parent. Neff’s response to the parent ‘shushing’ her autistic son was a mixture of fierce defence of her child and subsequent self-compassion. She reflected afterwards that both components are totally necessary and valid: to legitimately exhibit a fierce protective anger to mitigate suffering/social judgment on behalf of those who are misunderstood (‘the fight’) and self-compassion, so we are a good friend to ourselves when we are in the midst of a struggle (Fierce Self-Compassion, 2021). That’s the first reason that this concept is useful – it gives permission to legitimately be angry at injustice and actively and outwardly express that anger (there’s more to say here about the how – but that’s another blog post!), and alongside the permission to not beat ourselves up or carry the weight of social judgment, but recognise that we need to be a best friend to ourselves (and not just in times of adversity).
For Neff there are three key components of self-compassion:
Kindness: within self-compassion is a drive to alleviate suffering. Sometimes this can be easier to do for others than for ourselves. We pour so much into supporting others we often have no more kindness to extend to ourselves when things haven’t gone as we had hoped. Kindness gives us the capacity to extend understanding and acceptance to ourselves; to say ‘this has been rough’ and ask ‘how can I best support myself?’.
Common humanity: this is where we are aware that others may be suffering too. We can often become isolated and feel like the anger and the fight is ours alone. It’s also a reminder that we are as Neff says ‘worthy of humane treatment’ (2021: 23). Here self-compassion is being aware that we ourselves, and others, are worthy of compassion.
Mindfulness: what Neff means here is really the capacity to sit with discomfort – to acknowledge that what we are doing is difficult or hard, and be aware that we may need support during difficult times. This mindfulness is ‘being aware of’
Self-compassion can be a challenge when you are exhausted from advocating and supporting others. It might not feel that you have enough energy left to support yourself.
This is where coaching can help. As you’ll see on our Care for You website, coaching is a talking space, where you bring whatever you need and you have an empathetic supportive listener to share your story with. Coaching is more than listening: coachees have said it can provide ‘containment’, a safe place to put stories and troubles so they don’t leak out into other areas of life; and it can help (if you want it to), with thinking through what will come next for you. In essence, coaching is great space for scaffolding parents and carers to build self-compassion:
Kindness: Coaching is a space that is dedicated to you. It can be a first step in helping you to recognise and articulate your needs, followed by supporting you to plan to meet your needs. If you find being your own best friend difficult, you can be confident that your coach
will hold you in high regard to help you to begin to do this work.
Mindfulness: we can’t take away the frustrations and depletions of these battles, but if you need it, coaching can give you a place to unpack how you are feeling and think through how you might face these battles, what steps you’ll take first, and what steps will follow those.
So coaching might be one way that you can be supported to keep going, or it can help you to build strategies, coping mechanisms, and support to help you get to where you need to go. If you want to talk, please get in touch with us info@careforyoucoaching.co.uk. We’re here for you as parents and carers, to support you to support your loved ones, and to support yourselves.