Unlock the Heart: Cultivating Inner-Self-Compassion After Trauma
Unlock the Heart: Cultivating Inner-Self-Compassion After Trauma

The Gris Alves‘s Podcast Tales of Recovery

Gris Alves talks about why inner self-compassion is so difficult after trauma and childhood survival patterns. She shares a practical visualisation exercise and body-based reflections to help gently open a long-protected heart.

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16:21•7 Apr 2026

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Unlock the Heart: Learning Self-Compassion After Trauma

Episode Overview

Self-compassion is often the hardest mindfulness practice because many people were wired in childhood to survive, not to feel kind towards themselves.
A four-person loving-kindness visualisation (loved one, stranger, difficult person, self) can reveal where the heart is open and where it is shut down.
Children often protect themselves by believing they are ‘bad’ rather than seeing caregivers’ limitations, which makes adult self-kindness feel unsafe.
Self-compassion is a somatic, body-based process; noticing sensations, emotions and softness in the body matters more than repeating positive phrases.
Supportive spaces, including carefully held psychedelic work, can help open a long-guarded heart, but ongoing practice and integration are essential.

“It’s not your fault that your parents didn’t have their shit together. And it’s not your responsibility.”

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction, trauma and self-blame? This episode of **Tales of Recovery** centres on how hard it can be to turn compassion inward, especially after a childhood shaped by survival. Host Gris Alves speaks straight to anyone who finds it easy to care for others yet strangely awkward, even cringey, when trying to be kind to themselves.

She breaks down why: “Most of our adaptive behaviours or personalities come from how we had to survive and adapt… and most of it is an internal taking it in and assuming that you're the bad person.” You’ll hear a simple but powerful loving-kindness exercise using four people: someone you adore, a random stranger, someone you struggle with, and finally yourself.

Gris invites you to notice how each image lands in your body – where there’s ease, where there’s numbness, and where resistance shows up. The contrast often reveals how fiercely your heart is still in protection mode. She also tackles a crucial message for anyone carrying old guilt about their upbringing: “It’s not your fault that your parents didn’t have their shit together.

And it’s not your responsibility.” That line alone may hit home for people in recovery who’ve spent years thinking they were the problem. From childhood adaptations and emotional neglect through to grief, spiritual bypassing and even the role of psychedelic-supported spaces in gently prising open a locked heart, the tone stays raw, warm and very human. Self-compassion is framed as a bodily practice, not a slogan: something you cultivate like brushing your teeth, day after day.

If you’ve ever wondered why being kind to yourself feels so much harder than staying stuck in self-judgement, this gentle yet direct conversation might be the nudge to start softening your own heart. Where could a little more tenderness towards yourself change the way you heal?

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