My Healing Journey With Compassionate Inquiry
With Matt O’Donnell
For over a year, I’ve been immersed in Compassionate Inquiry (CI), an approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté. What first drew me in was Gabor’s capacity to speak with clarity and heartfelt compassion about the pain that lives under the surface of our lives. Like many others, I have found his deep respect for the human condition to be comforting and inspiring
Compassionate Inquiry is more of a heart process than a cognitive one, yet we use thoughts to help guide us to what lies within. CI helps clients gently explore how early experiences shapes their current emotional patterns. One key practice is separating thoughts from feelings. For example, many of us say, “I feel like I’m not good enough,” which is not a feeling but rather a thought. The feeling beneath might be sadness, fear, or shame. Name feelings accurately can help us to better connect to the honest pain. Identifying these core emotions helps us meet the young part of ourselves who created that belief in order to feel safe — or at least, to make sense of something overwhelming.
This approach overlaps beautifully with Internal Family Systems (IFS), in which we gently turn toward a wounded part of ourselves and offer it the compassion and presence it may have never received. Rather than trying to fix or push away pain, we witness it with curiosity and care. Whether it’s a belief like “I have to be perfect to be loved” or a part that lashes out in anger to avoid vulnerability, both CI and IFS guide us back to our wise, aware, present Self that can hold it all.
I have found CI to also be highly effective with couples. So often, relational tension is rooted in each person’s unhealed stories — the young parts that didn’t feel seen, safe, or loved. Through Compassionate Inquiry, couples begin to recognize: this reactivity isn’t about you, it’s about something much older. And once they can name that, it becomes possible to soften, to stay present, and to respond from connection rather than protection.
CI is deeply somatic. We explore where emotions live in the body, what stories the body carries, and how we can return to presence through breath, awareness, and grounding. As a practitioner, I recognize that every person’s experiences are unique, and my role is to help you heal old wounds and develop new beliefs that feel true to you now. I also show up as a fellow human who knows what it’s like to feel fear, shame, and longing. That resonance can support others and help them feel accepted and understood through their healing journey.
What continues to move me most is watching clients reconnect with their authentic Self — the one that was always there, just hidden behind layers of adaptation. When we meet our younger parts with compassion, we begin to realize we don’t have to keep trying to protect ourselves the way we did back then. When we let our Self lead, we can choose how we want to respond to a situation rather than reacting the way our younger parts did when they were hurt, scared, or felt unsafe
If any of this speaks to you — if you’re longing to feel more ease, connection, or clarity — I’d be honoured to connect with you. I offer individual and couples counselling both online and in person through Seahorse Counselling. You’re welcome exactly as you are.
