Being a compassionate mess means that we take the stance of a lifelong learner who will definitely make clumsy mistakes along the way. Finally the aspiration of becoming a cultural compassionate mess calls us to work with our own difficult emotions that arise as we explore taboo topics such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation and the like – these emotions will arise and we can respond to them with kindness and understanding. We could subdivide the categories of cultural compassionate messiness into 3 categories: compassionate critical self-reflection, cultural conversations with compassion, and compassionate approach to institutional accountability.

Inquiry is a term that is used in Mindful Self Compassion Teaching (MSC), and more recently it has been adopted for use in MSC based therapy. In this article I explore what Inquiry means, how to do it in the therapy room, and some ways in which it is similar to the practice of Motivational Interviewing (MI).