I had been struggling with vaginismus for a very long time and then finally I could take action so that I got healed from it. 

 

You can find my story here. 

 

So I know how difficult it is to deal with the “little woman” in your mind who is constantly telling you “you are going to fail”, “you’re not good enough”, “you don’t deserve” etc. 😊. Her hurtful comments never seem to stop, she was tireless. But this persistence only showed me how much potential our minds have!

 

The determined, powerful voice of the little woman in my head continued to haunt me for a while. Slowly, my relationship and responses towards her began to shift and transform as I learned to be more compassionate towards others and myself.

So how do I cultivate that then?

I will answer that, but before, I want you to go back to a moment in time where you tried something a bit challenging, a bit new for you. It doesn’t have to be in your far past, just try to remember that moment.

 

How were you treating yourself at the time? Think about it.

Or let me rephrase the question: Can you remember the last time that you genuinely congratulated yourself for anything that you did within the last month? Anything at all?

 

Can you remember being grateful for yourself at least once or twice? No? 😊

No worries, I can relate to that. You are not alone, for sure!

 

Let me tell you something: during those times you were lacking “compassion”. 

It is hard to say to ourselves:

•  “It’s ok to have this condition”,
•  “you look stunning today” as looking in the mirror,
•  “I love you and you are a lovable woman!”

It is difficult to accept ourselves as we are because not only are we lacking compassion towards ourselves but also to others.

 

Let ‘s take one more walk down memory lane, then I will show you the 3 ways to cultivate compassion in your lives.

Have you ever tried using dilator?

If you have, how was it? I mean, how did you treat yourself at that very moment?

 

When I tried it for the very first time, I felt little pain. Which is logical, don’t you think? It was like trying to push my finger into my mouth, even though my lips were pressed tight. So it is only natural that when I kept trying to force my finger in despite the pain, that the sensation only felt worse. But does that seem as though I was being compassionate towards myself?

 

It’s the same scenario with our vaginas. So we need to choose the way in which we view pain, in order to transform it and take away its power over our bodies.

 

This allows us to focus on relaxing our legs or belly. One of the methods that helped me was placing a hand on my chest to focus on that feeling rather than the pain I was experiencing below.

 

Or, you can choose to stay in the battle and carry on trying to force the dilator into your vagina over and over again, despite the pain. Even at the risk of our phobia growing and demotivating ourselves against overcoming it. And then the little woman in our heads will be right, cause according to her, you can not do it, remember?

So let’s get back to the question: how can we cultivate compassion?

I already explained how to expand our hearts’ capacity at my previous post, indeed. You can find it here. But to dive into compassion a bit more, I find it’s very necessary to remember which practices link to “compassion” fundamentally.

There are 3 ways to cultivate compassion:

 

1. Practicing loving and kindness 
2. Practicing compassion 
3. Practicing mindfulness meditation

 

Let’s look at them a bit closer:

#1 Practicing loving and kindness:

This practice is based on cultivating unconditional love towards beings without them knowing and without expecting anything in return.

 

This differed from today’s society’s understanding of “love”. Too often we tend to love people around us so long as we get certain things back from them, whether subconsciously or not.

 

By practicing love and kindness towards others, we repeat phrases of well wishes and send them off to others. Which helps us cultivate a different quality of love and care for others. Once we expand our heart for others, it will expand for ourselves too. Helping us become more understanding, more caring, and more loving towards ourselves.

#2 Practicing compassion:

This is the practice of sending love and kindness to those enduring suffering right now. And just like the first method, practicing compassion for others will help you expand your compassion for yourself. 

 

Compassion is completely different from pity because pity is not proactive. When we are compassionate, we move towards helping, rather than avoiding suffering. So it is important for you to differentiate between the two in your journey towards healing.

 

#3 Practicing mindfulness meditation:

“What mindfulness does in a way is it embraces the actuality of the mind, the heart, the body, and our relationality with the outer world and gives us new degrees of freedom to navigate the ups and downs and ins and outs of our relationships with life, with other people, with our own aspirations, and our own fears” (Dr. John Kabat-Zinn, What is Mindfulness?)

 

So there you have it! There are 3 ways of cultivating compassion in your life. It is extremely important that we start our vaginismus healing journey with more understanding and kindness in order for you to reach your goal.

 

And trust me, I know as much as you do how hard this is to do, especially when you feel all alone.

 

Because of that, we have created a beautiful online community. You can join us from here.

 

Not only do we talk about these topics in more detail, but we also practice the tips and tricks I have learned along my healing journey so that you can empower yourselves to feel whole again. 

 

So what would you say? Join us! 

It’d be awesome to have you there and overcome vaginismus together. 

 

Question: 

Imagine for a minute what it would feel like to be more loving, caring and compassionate person, to be more at ease in yourself. Think about how it would help you to have another relationship with you and your vaginismus healing journey. How long are you willing to wait to achieve that? 

And if it’s not now, then when?

 

Be sure to join my free Overcoming Vaginismus online community! Join here.

 

If you want to get to know more about healing it, then you can download my free overcoming guide from here.

 

“After all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth “You owe me”. Look what happens with a love like that; It lights the whole sky.”

E-mail: petek@yeswecanhealtogether.com