Why Being Compassionate People Requires Courage And Bravery
Sometimes it is understood that compassion is a quality that makes us vulnerable, condescending with what we are, with what happens to us. Something similar to “draining the buck.” Therefore, stopping to think about a compassionate person may bring to mind images of people who seem fragile or weak to you.
In the dictionary we can find the definition of compassion as a feeling of sadness that comes from seeing someone suffer and that drives us to alleviate their pain, suffering or to remedy or avoid it in some sense. But it’s really not just this.
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:
Besides, 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 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 make us people full of courage and brave. But there is much more behind compassion.
There is research that suggests that our brain contains at least three emotional regulation systems 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 responsible for detecting and respond quickly to fight, flee, freeze, or confront a situation, from anxiety, anger, or disgust. The fear of being harmed in some way would be their main fuel.
When this system is more activated than the others, we tend to interact with the world and the people around us seeking protection and security from possible threats to our physical or mental integrity. As if we were in danger.
For better or worse, it is a primitive system that prioritize threats over pleasant things (Baumeister, Bratlavsky, Finkenauer & Vhons, 2001), and it is clear that in the era where we lived surrounded by beasts willing 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 obtain resources to be able to survive, prosper and satisfy 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 achieving these things.
That is, this system helps and motivates us to satisfy our basic vital needs as social beings, but 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) . Consequently, 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 we expected.
This system helps us provide tranquility and balance in our lives. When animals do not have to defend themselves from threats or necessarily obtain 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 an inner peace that generates feelings of lack of need and increases connection with others.
Training ourselves in this system can make us compassionate people 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 on brain systems that are also associated with the feelings of satisfaction and joy generated by hormones called endorphins.
Oxytocin is another hormone related (along with enforphins) with feelings of security in social relationships that gives us the feelings of feeling loved, desired and safe with others (Carter, 1998; Wang, 2005).
In fact, there is increasing evidence that Oxytocin is related to social support and reduces stress and that people with low levels of it present high levels of stress response (Heinrichs, Baumgatner, Kirschbaum, Ehlert, 2003).
Why does being compassionate require courage and bravery?
Therefore, being brave when relating to the world around us, establishing relationships, being open, not rejecting or avoiding or acting as if we care about other people’s lives, may have to do with feeling good with ourselves and It can also prevent developing psychological pathologies in the future. Because whether 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 let ourselves be carried away by primary instincts that seek to satisfy our desires and unsatisfied needs at all times. But for the latter, great 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 want (letting ourselves be carried away by systems based on threat or achievement), to give priority to what we truly value (system of comfort, satisfaction and security).
