Compassion as a tool

When you first think about the word “compassion”, what comes to mind? For most people, it’s a term used to describe thoughts or actions towards others, very similar to kindness. For others, they may think of compassion towards themselves, how they are there for their own needs to then meet the needs of others. Compassion can be described by people as an action to convey a feeling or emotion. How frequently, then, do people think of compassion as a tool to reduce the overload of emotions many people have recently been experiencing due to national and global events? The answer is probably not very frequently but compassion is exactly what is needed in the situations outside of our control, which very often as those events that we hear about on the news, social media or from others.

Compassion in action is more internal than external. We practice compassion by building off of empathy towards others, having care and concern for the well-being of other people and being internally motivated to support other people. There are numerous studies that show the benefits behind the practice of compassion through neuroscience. One way to reduce the risk of what is called compassion fatigue (or feeling overwhelmed by empathizing with the suffering of others) is to have consistent and clear boundaries between ourselves and other people. We can have empathy for the pain other people are experiencing but through exploring ways to support and take action we alleviate some of the distress we could experience through compassion fatigue.

Another more radical practice of compassion is to try and practice this with something that initially evokes feelings of anger in you. Especially recently, people are inundated with news media and feeds filled with content designed to get a response from users and usually that response is anger. If you are experiencing feelings of anger when reading or watching something in your social media feed or news media, attempt to take a moment and practice compassion. Try and empathize with the other person. This is not an easy task, but something we need to try more frequently. Why? Because with empathy there is intentional action. Anger creates action as well but sometimes in ways that are destructive to ourselves and others and over time it depletes us of critical thinking and self-efficacy and empowerment.

Compassion as a tool is a way to truly understand what this means to us and our communities.

#compassion #love #empathy #emotionalintelligence #selfcompassion