For years, Deirdre Arato thought her empathy was her best quality. She could read any room and sense every shift in mood. As a child in a volatile home, that kept her safe. As an adult, it slowly drained her.
“I overextended. I over-gave. I over-understood,” she writes in Beauty in the Brokenness, published by Writers of the West. She stayed in relationships that depleted her and explained away behavior that hurt her. She called it compassion. Eventually she saw it as self-abandonment.
“Real empathy doesn’t require self-abandonment.”
Her way out is a practice she calls the Soul Compass. It’s one of the exercises readers mention most. One Amazon reviewer said it “helped me identify my own core values and think about whether I’m actually living in alignment with them.”
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Find your soul values. Read through a full list of core values and circle every word you feel in your body, not just the ones that sound good. Narrow it down to five.
Step 2: Compare ego and soul. For each value, ask what the ego taught you to value instead, and how that swap has kept you small.
Step 3: Put each value into action. Pick one small daily action for each value. Honesty: say one true thing today, kindly. Freedom: say no to one thing that drains you. Compassion: when you make a mistake, treat yourself the way you’d treat a friend.
Step 4: Reset when you’re triggered. When an urge hits, pause and ask: “Which value am I betraying if I follow this urge?” Then ask which value you can choose instead.
Her point is that most suffering comes from the gap between who you are and who you learned to be. Every choice that matches your values closes that gap a little more.
If you’ve spent your life looking after everyone else and losing track of yourself, this exercise is a good place to start, and Beauty in the Brokenness has many more like it.
Get Beauty in the Brokenness on Amazon →
Book Details
Title: Beauty in the Brokenness: A Journey Back to the Soul
Author: Deirdre Arato, M.Ed., LPC, NCC
Publisher: Writers of the West
Release Date: September 23, 2026
ASIN: B0HKT6XDPB
Print Length: 163 pages
Language: English
Genre: Memoir / Self-Help: Trauma Recovery, Addiction & Recovery, Spiritual Healing
Formats: Kindle (free with Kindle Unlimited), Paperback, Hardcover
Available on: Amazon
Lisa’s the history buff who turns pages into portals to the past. She’ll transport you through time with her historical fiction recommendations and insightful reviews.
