Why Being Compassionate Requires Courage and Courage
Compassion is sometimes understood to be a quality that makes us vulnerable, condescending with what we are, with what happens to us. Something similar to "drain the bundle". For this reason, thinking about a compassionate person may bring to mind images of people who are fragile or weak to you.
In the dictionary we can find the definition of compassion as a feeling of sadness that produces to see someone suffer and that prompts us to alleviate their pain, suffering or to remedy or avoid it in some sense. But it really is not only this.
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The Importance of Compassion
Actually, compassion is not a feeling that is necessarily identified with sadness, but rather with feelings of value, courage and respect towards ourselves and towards others. It goes beyond our primal instincts.
In fact, for one of the pioneering researchers of self-compassion worldwide (Kristin Neff, 2003), compassion towards ourselves is based on:
- Be aware of and open to our own suffering
- Be kind and don't condemn ourselves
- Be aware of sharing experiences of suffering with others, instead of embarrassing ourselves or feeling alone, showing our common openness to humanity.
What's more, Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) devised by British psychologist Paul Gilbert, was designed for people who presented complex and chronic mental problems derived from self-criticism, shame and who also came from conflictive environments.
That being said, it seems then that the fact of not being ashamed of what we think and feel about ourselves is one of the things that makes us courageous and brave. But there is much more to compassion.
Emotional regulation systems
There is research that indicates that our brain contains at least three systems of emotional regulation to react to the things we perceive from the following systems (Paul Gilbert, 2009):
1. Threat and self-protection system
This system is the one in charge of detecting and respond quickly from fighting, running away, getting paralyzed or facing a situation, from anxiety, anger or disgust. The fear of being harmed in some sense would be your main fuel.
When this system is more activated than the others, we tend to relate to the world and people that surround us seeking protection and security against possible threats to our physical integrity or mental. As if we were in danger.
For better or for worse, it is a primitive system that prioritize threats over pleasant things (Baumeister, Bratlavsky, Finkenauer & Vhons, 2001), and it is clear that at the time when we lived surrounded by beasts ready to devour us, it was very useful to us.
2. Incentive and resource search activation system
This system tries to offer us feelings that drive us to get resources to survive, prosper and meet our vital needs as human beings (Depue & Morrone- Strupinsky, 2005)
It is a system that seeks to feel rewarded with things like sex, food, friendships, recognition or comfort that activates the threat and protection system when for some reason, we are blocked from getting these things.
That is, this system helps and motivates us to satisfy our basic vital needs as social beings, but to Sometimes an excess of it can lead us to desire goals that we cannot achieve and disconnect from what we can (Gilbert, 1984; Klinger 1977). In consecuense, we can feel frustrated, sad and overwhelmed when we feel that we are fully involved in our jobs or projects and things do not go as expected.
3. Comfort, satisfaction and safety system
This system helps us provide peace and balance in our lives. When animals do not have to defend themselves from threats or necessarily achieve something, they can be satisfied (Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky, 2005).
This system awakens feelings of satisfaction and security by making us feel that we don't need to fight to achieve something. It is about an internal peace that generates feelings of absence of needs and increases the connection with others.
Training ourselves in this system can make us compassionate. and it can be very effective for our well-being.
The kindness, tranquility and security that we can perceive from our environment towards ourselves act in systems that are also associated with feelings of satisfaction and joy generated by hormones called endorphins.
The oxytocin is another hormone related (along with enforphins) with feelings of security in relationships social that provides us with the feelings of feeling loved, desired and safe with others (Carter, 1998; Wang, 2005).
In fact, there is growing evidence that oxytocin is linked to social support and reduces stress, and that people with low levels of it have high levels of response to stress (Heinrichs, Baumgatner, Kirschbaum, Ehlert, 2003).
Why does being compassionate take courage and bravery?
Therefore, being brave when it comes to relating to the world around us, to establish relationships, to be open, not to rejecting or avoiding or pretending to care about other people's lives, it may have to do with feeling good about ourselves themselves and can also avoid developing psychological pathologies in the future. Because we like it or not, we are and continue to be social beings. And this is where compassion would come into play.
That is, thanks to this system of comfort, security and satisfaction, we can train ourselves to develop the qualities of compassion, and not letting ourselves be carried away by primal instincts that seek to satisfy our unsatisfied wants and needs in everything moment. But for the latter, large doses of courage and bravery are needed.
Great doses of courage and bravery in the sense of being able to recognize ourselves that in terms of well-being, it is better to sometimes give up what we desire (to let ourselves be carried away by systems based on threat or achievement), to prioritize what we truly value (system of comfort, satisfaction and safety).
Bibliographic references
- Baumeister, R.F; Bratslavski, E; Finkeneauesr, C. and Vohs, K.D (2001) "Bad is stronger than Good", Review of General Psychology, 5: 323-370.
- Carter, C.S. (1998) "Neuroendocrine perspectives on social attachment and love", Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23: 779-818.
- Depue, R.A and Morrone-Strupinsky, J.V. (2005) "A neurobehavioral model of affiliative bonding", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28: 315-395.
- Gilbert, P. (1984) Depression: From Psychology to Brain State. London: Lawrence Erbaum Associates Inc.
- Heinrichs, M.; Baumgartner, T.; Kirschbaum, C. and Ehlert, U. (2003) "Social support and oxytocin interact to suppress cortisol and subjective response to psychosocial stress", Biological Psychiatry, 54: 1389-1398.
- Wang, S. (2005). “A conceptual framework for integrating research related to the physiology of compassion and the wisdom of Buddhist teachings ”in P. Gilbert (Ed.), Compassion: Conceptualizations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy (pp. 75-120). London: Bruner. Routledge.