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"Soften often"

Graham Westwell


What does ‘soften often’ mean?

 

Over the last few years, I’ve been encouraging the counselling students I’ve worked closely with, to ‘soften often’ in their own practice. I’ve also encouraged clients and supervisees to try and do the same within their process.


So much so, that I’ve been made and given t-shirts, fridge magnets, and badges, to celebrate this phrase! It seems to resonate at a deeply personal level with folk.

 

What does ‘soften often’ mean in practice?

 

Most of the time we are on the lookout. Watching to see who or what will get us. We don’t tend to be watching just with our eyes, either; rather – we are watching with our bodies. This is not an empathic 'getting us' – but a feeling of threat on so many levels. Some actual, most perceptual – often memories of earlier experiences which still resonate at an embodied, emotional, spiritual, energetic, psychological level.

 

We may then realise that we’ve been holding ourselves in habitual ways of defendedness out of maladaptive necessity. We’ve been doing the best we can in difficult circumstances. There’s no blame attached here. However, this ‘holding on’ takes its toll, eventually, in some way or other. We might start to notice the stress of things, as we live inside a rigid perspective, or a rigid way of relating; or we may adapt our ‘personality’ to the situation, so that we appear harder (or more rigid) than we actually are; or even that we keep trying to be open whilst a part of us keeps getting hurt and hurt and hurt. Perhaps softening is a way of saying ‘no more’ - and in saying this, learning to become kinder to ourselves.

 

To soften means to primarily accept oneself and place in the world with a radical level of self-acceptance. What is a radical level? Well, as much as it takes, to let go of the self-critical voice and then more so! To soften means to feel one’s eyes moisten as the swell of emotion shifts inside. A remembering of our right as sentient beings to experience being vulnerable (again) in the world.

 

When we are born, we are entirely vulnerable, totally dependent on whomever is present in our lives. We owe our existence to these people. They kept us alive. As we've grown we become more self-agential. Can we re-learn to experience a kind of sentient vulnerability in a way where are able to sustain ourselves?

 

To soften means noticing one’s breath. Just noticing, nothing more – just breathing, in and out, however it feels.

 

To soften means noticing the self-critical voice that berates and belittles (often silently); that tells us to do more, to keep going, to strive, to advance.


To soften means to stand still and to take refuge. To take refuge in the quiet of the moment where the self-critical voice has no place or power.

 

To soften means to let go of the things that we should and could be doing – and to learn to be-with ourselves in a different kind of way.

 

I once wrote a poem related to this:

 

Silence soothes

Soft

through the eyes

     of your smile.

 

We can let ourselves be vulnerable and immediately stop wasting energy being defended and hardened. Like Buddha responding to Nalagiri the raging elephant with loving kindness or Thich Nhat Hhan simply walking with gratitude and joy – all ways of being that are possible with practice; not reacting to context or organisations, or other peoples hardened disconnect or expectations. It’s not necessarily easy to do this and there is no quick fix solution. That’s why the phrase is soften often.

 

It’s often helpful to find folk who will encourage you to be this way. Perhaps, they will hold the space for you, in which you might feel able to ‘let go’ into your own softness.

 

This is the kind of space I aim to offer and hold for my clients and supervisees in my own private practice.


One where they can soften into their own experience and to begin to feel the light expansiveness of their own being.


(c) Graham Westwell, 2024.

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karen
Nov 14, 2024

Thank you Graham for your gentle and consistent encouragement to soften into my own vulnerable sensitivity. I really appreciate what you bring and encourage in me in our work together. Karen

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