- Close your eyes
- See if you can identify something about yourself that you don’t like (choose small or medium, not large).
- Check in with yourself how you feel about that. Likely it will be something “negative”, e.g. frustrated or annoyed.
- Next we ask ourselves of this feeling, “what might that be trying to achieve?”
- We keep this questioning going, looking for a quality of protection - it is protecting us
- Then we ask, “Who is it defending?” or “Who is it protecting?”
- Then ask “Why would it do that?”, or “Why would it defend you?”
- Could it be because it cares about you?
- Isn’t that amazing, that this unpleasant sensation is there because it cares!!
We’re exploring here how, underneath unpleasant experience lies a caring motivation. They are an expression of part of our brain caring for us, wanting to alert us to something that we should attend to.