2023 AGM: Compassion Therapy

My other November post covers the second of the two September presentations made for the support groups AGM. Hannah Gilbert talked about compassion therapy, and how these approaches could help people with HSP. This is also available on YouTube, should you wish to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5recS_guY 

Compassion and Compassion Therapy

Hannah started off with an introduction of compassion, describing it as the motivation to address suffering. The key steps in this approach are:

• The first step is recognising that suffering happens
• Suffering can be experienced by anybody, for many reasons - it has a universal characteristic
• Compassion involves having sympathy and/or empathy for suffering
• Distress from suffering happens, and this needs to be tolerated
• Essentially compassionate behaviour is motivation to act to alleviate the distress and suffering

Compassion focussed therapy boils down to two key elements - you need to understand situations, and approach or engage with that suffering - requiring courage. Then you need to work towards alleviating that suffering - requiring dedication and wisdom.

Over thousands of year humans have evolved to have a sensitive system which allows us to notice suffering in in our environment, and to respond to that. These responses are our minds organising themselves to change our behaviours to address the suffering. Compassion therapy is about developing these qualities.

All mammals care for their young, and that care increases the chance of survival for the young. Bodies are equipped with nerves, and endorphins (etc) are produced in response to situations which change behaviours. Humans are different from other animals as we are sentient and are aware of situations from the perspective of others. We know that there is a difference between pain/suffering and our reactions to that pain/suffering. Compassion can help address both sides of this.

It is not your fault

Many people carry a lot of shame/guilt/disappointment about the situation they are in. But, a lot of what we experience is not our fault. We do not choose the bodies we live in, we do not choose what we have inherited from our family, and we do not choose much of the environment that we develop and live in.

Also, the society that we live in has particular societal norms. In the age of social media many of the portrayals of the social norms are not real. We can often find ourselves not matching these norms, and that can lead to a sense of shame or loss of dignity.

If you are in this situation it may be beneficial to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. You should not blame yourself for things out of your control. When looking at the bigger picture, it is important to realise that not all things can be fixed. The trick is to focus on what can be done.

Emotions and their regulation

There are three basic systems in the body for emotions and their regulation.

Most obviously, we are very good at responding the threats. The responses of anxiety or anger are automatic to threats, and these are us seeking safety or protection. Of course, society has changed a lot since these responses evolved - we are currently less likely to be the prey of a carnivore!

The next system is our drive system. This is about finding resources, wanting and pursuing things. Similar to the threat system, our responses are around taking action to doing more.

The third system is the soothing system. This system regulates the other two systems, and involves things like resting and digesting resulting in feeling safe. Associated with this is kindness, which you can get either from others or from yourself.

In theory these three systems should balance out each other. However, the threat system can dominate over the other two such that they only play a negligible role. Staying in the threat zone can lead to disappointment dominating other feelings. It is important to note that ways of thinking can keep people in this threat zone even after the triggering threat has subsided. One solution to this is to try to access the soothing system.

Difficult Emotions

There are three emotions that can be particularly difficult to deal with - Anger, Anxiety and Sadness. However, the responses to each are similar, and it can be helpful to think about how you respond when you experience these emotions, and these thoughts can be developed into a motivation to reduce them. The initial thoughts are probably not very helpful.

• Where is your attention focussed when you experience these?
• What are you thinking about when you experience these?
• What is your body doing?
• What actions do you want to take?
• Which memories are you thinking about?

These lead onto the final question to think about - what helps you to settle? The aim is not to push the feelings away, but to consider what would help you to settle.

If you experience these emotions a lot it can lead to long term negative thoughts, including avoidance and denial.

Using Compassion

As noted, motives help organise the mind into action, and compassion is encouraging car based motives. The two key elements are:

• Using the body to support the mind - this could be through meditation, mindfulness, breathing, diet, exercise, and so on.
• Choosing a quality to develop - this could be around learning, playfulness, joy, friendliness, having positive thoughts, having helpful behaviours, and so on.

Self compassion is like a muscle, the more that you practice it, the stronger and more resilient the behaviours become. Begin by thinking - how can I be helpful to myself.