Hi @grubbytoes @Appleblossom @MoonGal @Shaz51 @Former-Member and others who have participated or are interested in this discussion thread,
Today I have for the third time taken this short self-compassion quiz by Kristin Neff that @grubbytoes posted in 2015. There have been a number of years between each time I have taken the test. Each time I have done it more out of curiosity than conviction about the results. Still, it's interesting to compare results across a span of years and have a bit of a rave about my thoughts on this.
In 2015 I was scoring highest on isolation. Reassuringly I was also scoring high on mindfulness. My lowest score was self kindness. Overall I was about average on self compassion.
In 2018 I was still scoring highest on isolation, mindfulness score had reduced somewhat. Score had improved on self-kindness and was slightly lower than average on overall self-compassion.
In 2021 the test again suggests I am high on isolation, and reassuringly high on mindfulness again. Assessment of my self-kindness shows it now one point away from actually being high. Self judgement is high in this year's results, worse than the 2015 and 2018 results. Scored high on over-identification for the first time. Overall I once again score average on overall self-compassion.
So, after ongoing and active engagements with therapies and support over these six years, and a lot of improvements in my participation with the world and quality of daily life, the quiz seems to suggest that not much has changed in my basic inner thoughts and feelings about things. This leads me to suspect that some of these traits and attitudes may well be fundamental to who I am, or to my biochemistry, in any case not at all easy to change to a great extent.
After decades exploring different kinds of therapies and approaches, I find the conscious mind, its words and ideas, is only the tip of the iceberg of my human self. As I see it, the bigger realities of myself are wordless, and may not be greatly affected or changed by my conscious ideas. The vast majority and power of the iceberg seems to reside much more in my body, heart and soul, which have also seem to have a greater intelligence that is beyond words.
Having said that, over the long term (years, decades), various forms of therapy and learning have built up into some positive improvements and generally increased the quality of my life. Far from a cure, but I have also learned along the way that some improvement truly is better than none, even if I continue to live with daily distress.
For me, the 'over-identification' category in the quiz was best explained earlier by @Appleblossom as tending to involve "a merging of the entire self with the issue, and an inability to be aware that there are parts of the self that are not actually hooked into the behaviour, the negative thought, etc."
I love that part of what Apple said about there being parts of the self that are not actually hooked into the pain of what we are experiencing. These are parts of myself that I seek to grow and become more connected to. In many ways this is for me a spiritual quest to heal my relationship with life itself. I will likely be seeking this until my very last breath.
