(Self)-Compassion

What it is and why we need it

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive”

— The Dalai Lama

When it comes to compassion, I have two motivations, one personal and one general. On a personal level, I want to both be more self-compassionate and other-compassionate. In my last essay, I talked about some of the difficulties of my past year. I was lonely, anxious, and stuck in limbo. One of my regrets is that I was not kinder to myself, that I did not improve the moment for myself as much as I could have. There were many external causes of my belief that I was worthless, incompetent, undeserving and doomed to failure. That I let myself suffer from those beliefs and the judgments which came along with them was a tragedy in itself. I’ve also noticed that I don’t just hold judgments for myself. I at times hold a lot of judgments for other people. There are situations I look back on where I see how much judgment I held or how my own suffering led me to hurt or push away someone I cared about. On a general level, I think the world would be much better if we had more compassion, both for ourselves and for others. I firmly believe that compassion is an important part of impartial moral concern. I think a big part of what drives many of us to become the activists, allies, trailblazers, and whistleblowers we are is, at the heart of things, compassion. We care so deeply and we want so much to alleviate the suffering of others that we give our lives over (sometimes literally) to make the world a better place for them. For me, compassion is the light in an otherwise dark world, and a flame which burns brighter for every wick it touches.

What is Compassion?

A rough intuition for what compassion is how one comforts a friend going through a tough time. If a friend is going through a tough time, I’m going to do what I can to alleviate their suffering. This doesn’t mean immediately brainstorming five contingency plans for them to solve the exact problem they’re facing, though maybe that can come later. I’m going to listen to them and validate their feelings. I’m going to tell them that what they’re going through is relatable to others, and that it’s not their fault or their burden alone. I’m going to tell them that I love them for who they are, flaws and all. I’m going to offer to help in the ways I can. I’m going to give them a hug. 

One might think of self-compassion as the inverse golden rule: treat yourself the way you’d want yourself to treat others. If I would want to be the type of person to encourage a friend, then I should also be the type of person who encourages themselves.

A more formal definition of compassion is recognizing and connecting with suffering and feeling the desire to alleviate it. While there are a number of proposed components of compassion, I’m going to go with a theory which divides compassion into three components: mindfulness, common humanity (or as I will call it from now on, common being), and loving-kindness.

Mindfulness is essentially the recognition part of compassion. If we don’t recognize that someone is suffering, then there’s not much we can do to alleviate their suffering. Really building up a thoughtful picture of how someone feels and what situation they’re in also helps us help them in ways which are actually helpful rather than just rattling off generic platitudes. I also think that mindfulness is an important part of compassion on both ends. When I’m really open and listening to what someone else has to say, judgment and tightness and unease seem to fall away, and I feel much closer with the person. Likewise, the feeling that someone really takes the time to listen and validate and understand is, for many of us, one of the most precious experiences. So being mindful is the important first step in compassion.

Common being is perhaps the most nebulous of the components. It is something like reminding the internal angsty teenager that there are others out there who understand them. We certainly find solace when we discover we have common experiences. For example, a person who has lost a spouse may find a special comfort in friendship with another person who has lost a spouse. Of course, everyone’s experiences are idiosyncratic to some degree. What is important is finding what is common, what allows one to relate to another and not feel alone. At the most abstract level, common being is grounded in the fact that all of us sentient beings suffer, that we all live in the same cold universe, that we all exist and experience. Nobody is perfect, life is hard for everybody, nobody asked to be here, and everyone will die (probably). These things unite us in a strange and ironic kind of way.

Loving-kindness is the flame which completes the candle. It is an opening of the heart to them, the joy at the thought of them and the genuine wishing for their well-being. When it meets suffering, it becomes the joyful wish to alleviate that suffering. Despite compassion being that which holds suffering, compassion is itself a joyful emotion. When one thinks of a parent seeing their child burst into tears, one does not think the most effective response is to burst into tears alongside them. Rather, one thinks of the parent hugging their child and speaking in soothing tones, perhaps with a gentle, loving smile on their face. One additionally imagines the smile brightening yet further when the child stops crying. This is compassion, the meeting of suffering with loving-kindness.

What is Compassion Not?

Now that we’ve gone through what compassion is, I will highlight a few things it is not, as well as why it’s important to distinguish compassion from these other things.

Compassion is not just loving-kindness, though the two are very closely related. Compassion includes loving-kindness within itself, and practicing loving-kindness can build compassion. The main difference is that loving-kindness has a more general outlook, and is not specifically concerned with suffering. Compassion might be thought of as a subset of loving-kindness, or as loving-kindness which is mindfully directed toward the alleviation of suffering.

Compassion is not (just) empathy, though again the two are very closely related. Empathy is commonly defined as the ability to feel the emotions of another coupled with the ability to take another’s perspective. Empathy is important for compassion, as we need to be able to understand what the other person is going through and deeply recognize that they are suffering. The difference is that for empathy, this adoption of the other’s perspective is the end in itself, while for compassion it is a means to an end. For compassion, the end is the desire to alleviate suffering. Imagine a nurse taking care of a terminally ill patient. The terminally ill patient confides in their nurse all the difficulties and stresses they are having, like the guilt of relying on family, the fear of dying, the daily pains and indignities that come with terminal illness. If the nurse is “merely” empathetic, they will feel the guilt, the fear, and the pain that the patient feels, and they will imagine themselves experiencing the scenarios the patient describes. If the nurse is compassionate, they will hold this empathy for the patient, but they will also experience a wholehearted desire for the patient’s suffering to be alleviated. Some evidence suggests that burnout results from empathic distress—the negative feelings induced by feeling the suffering of others—but does not result from compassion/concern for others.

Compassion is not pity. Pity is defined in some sense as seeing someone as low-status, as fundamentally less-than. Because this is its defining aspect, it can be used in both well-intentioned and ill-intentioned ways. “I pity them” can mean that one feels bad for someone or that one feels disgust for them. Thus, pity, like empathy, doesn’t necessarily entail a desire to help. But what really separates pity from compassion is that compassion connects us with others while pity cuts us off. When we pity someone, we think of that person as being uniquely low in something important like status, competence, likeability, self-awareness, moral character etc. When we pity ourselves, we are saying to ourselves that we are uniquely deficient in some important way as well. This is also why it feels kind of bad to be pitied, both by others and by ourselves. By contrast, connection with others is a core pillar of compassion. Compassion recognizes that everyone struggles and suffers in their own way, and that no one is any greater or lesser for that fact. Compassion treats everyone with dignity and respect. Compassion is a relationship that is characterized by a fundamental equality between parties which is grounded in the fact that we all exist and we all can suffer.

Finally, compassion is not (self-)esteem. Esteem is how highly one thinks of the qualities that a person has. High esteem bases itself on things like wealth, material possessions, social status, attractiveness, skill, intelligence, and general success. Compassion is focused on what a person is, the sentient being themselves. What a person has is contingent: that is, it comes and goes and is importantly out of one’s control. One may lose one’s wealth and possessions due to fraud or market collapse. One may lose one’s attractiveness and intelligence in a horrible accident. One may be successful one day, and by the whims of fortune unsuccessful the next. Esteem rises when we think we think someone is doing well, and falls when we think they are doing poorly. It is like a “fair-weather friend,” the one who cozies up to you and showers you in adulation when you’re successful, but who suddenly cannot be found the moment trouble arrives. Compassion, on the other hand, is unconditional. Compassion is concerned for all beings in all circumstances of all characters. Compassion is like a “true friend,” who sticks by you and supports you in your darkest moments.

Additional Objections to (Self)-Compassion

By understanding what compassion is and is not, we already dispel some of the objections to compassion. Compassion isn’t passively looking down on someone as pitiable, but recognizing their inherent dignity and equality and holding the active desire to help. Compassion doesn’t mean being grandiose or narcissistic to shore up one’s self-esteem—quite the opposite, it gives us the space to recognize areas for improvement and times we have failed. Still, there are a few additional objections I’d like to touch on.

Compassion is not indulgence. One example I really like is that when we think of a really good, compassionate parent, we don’t think of a person who indulges their child’s every whim. A parent who truly wants the best for their child has their child to go to school, eat their vegetables, and go to sleep on time. They may still do this in a very compassionate way; when their child shows anxiety about going to school, the parent may say gently, “What’s making you feel bad about going to school? I know school isn’t always fun or easy, and at the same time, I care about you, and school is really important for you to have a good life. What can I do to help make your school experience better?” Of course, life and parenting are not this simple. But I think at least trying for the compassionate response can go a long way. I believe that in a lot of cases, we are just looking for a little encouragement, help, and reassurance, and that providing this results in much more long-term flourishing than immediately resorting to punishment.

Compassion is not a fix-it. In fact, one of the first steps of compassion is radical acceptance. Acceptance of someone as they are, flaws and all; or acceptance of situations or feelings, however undesired they may be. In a way, one might think that reducing negative emotions or creating change in a person is a positive side-effect of compassion rather than its purpose. Compassion itself is solely the desire or intention to relieve suffering. But I think from that desire to relieve suffering springs forth the wish for things to be better. Fundamentally, we wish for things to change—for ourselves and others—because we think it would be better if the changes occurred. So while compassion is not about fixing things, it doesn’t mean just sitting on your hands and doing nothing. Rather, it allows for the graceful expression of what one already prefers, while still being able to hold space for the reality and suffering of the present moment.

Compassion is not the condoning of wrongdoing. A favorite scene that comes to mind is from Avatar the Last Airbender, when Zuko asks Iroh to teach him advanced enough firebending to beat Azula. “I know what you’re going to say,” Zuko says. “She’s my sister, and I should be trying to get along with her.” Iroh surprises Zuko when he says, “no, she’s crazy and she needs to go down.” Compassion is about being generous and understanding of the other’s perspective. Many conflicts and mistakes can be avoided if we take a more compassionate stance towards others, particularly those with people we know we share interests with. At the same time, when something has been done which is wrong, it’s wrong. We might have all the compassion in the world for an abuser when we understand that they themselves came from a broken and abusive household. That doesn’t stop us from recognizing that the abuse is wrong, and that it needs to be stopped, and that this takes priority over making the abuser feel validated. In fact, I think compassion can make us more effective in calling out wrongdoing and standing up for our boundaries and values. By taking a gentler tone and focusing on the wrongness of the action rather than the person, I think we make it easier for the person who acted to accept responsibility for the action, and to refrain from such actions in the future.

Compassion, or the need for compassion, is not weakness. I know for me personally, I want to be seen as the rock. I want to be that person who everyone can turn to when they’re in trouble. I want to be the one who keeps a level head in a crisis. I don’t want to feel like I’m burdening someone else, or worse, that I’m dependent on them. And I feel like I shouldn’t feel the emotional pain that I do, that others deal much better with much worse. These are all valid feelings. At the same time, thinking of compassion as weakness and martyrdom as strength is a hell of a corrosive drug. It feels good, but in some sense it’s a way of putting off dealing with the problem. I don’t mean to rag on that; what I have a problem with is calling that strength when it’s really just hurtful. By contrast, telling someone that you’re suffering or that you need help is putting your trust in someone that they won’t hurt, ignore, invalidate, or shame you. And being compassionate to someone really takes a lot of care, thought, forbearance, and self-regulation. Both giving and receiving compassion are therefore characterized by courage and strength, not weakness.

Compassion is not comparison or ill-wishing of others. I think this is really important to drive home. When we compare ourselves to situations in which others are suffering similar things, or invoke the truth that we all suffer, it can in some ways be near to comparison. Again, what I think distinguishes compassion from comparison is the focus on commonness. Let’s imagine a world in which only you suffer, and no one else does. What would matter to you is that other people were kind to you, that they understood what you were going through, and that they related to you as an equal. What compassion tries to remind us of is just this; that there are people who understand us, and that we are all equal in a fundamental sense and deserve love and kindness.

The Importance of Self-Compassion

For a long time, compassion was seen as a purely or primarily interpersonal thing. Compassion was from someone to someone else. More recently, researchers have begun to focus on self-compassion, compassion directed from oneself to oneself. Self-compassion itself is pretty similar to compassion. The main difference seems to be in us: we tend to have much less self-compassion than other-compassion, and the correlation between self-compassion and other-compassion seems to be pretty close to zero (here’s some research on this). We can be compassionate to others without necessarily being compassionate to ourselves. Still, there are a few reasons I think self-compassion is important in itself.

First, I believe that loving ourselves helps us to accept the love others show us. If we don’t love ourselves and someone shows us love, there are so many reasons we might just push it away. They’re just being nice. What do they want from me? They don’t really know me; if they did, they’d hate me. I don’t deserve this. And so on and so forth. When we feel compassion for ourselves, I think it allows us to accept compassion and help from others, and allows us to see that people are genuinely trying to help us, instead of suspecting a hidden motive or other insincerity. 

Second, if we can have self-compassion, it becomes such a huge source of well-being for us and for those around us. The one person who has a 0% chance of leaving you is you. Everyone has suffered and gone through some kind of trauma, and some people have unfortunately gone through a lot. Not everyone has had the people in their lives who gave them the love and compassion they needed when they needed it most. But we can be the ones who break that cycle. We can be the ones who are there for ourselves, who comfort ourselves in the midst of pain. That’s not to say that we can or should try to live completely isolated from and independent of others. But it is to say that self-compassion can be powerful, and that it’s something that is entirely internal to you. Whether there are other people in your life providing you with what you need or not, self-compassion is an improvement on what you have.

Finally, self-compassion leads to better and more sustainable other-compassion. Remember that compassion does mean recognizing and holding distress. If we get overwhelmed by distress, we become more likely to shut down. But if we can soothe ourselves, then we become more able to sit with the suffering of others. It’s like how they say that in the case of cabin depressurization, you should put on your own mask before helping others. You could just decide to help others, and for a while that would work. But at some point, you’d get less effective and then pass out. By putting on your own mask, you make sure that you can keep helping others when they need it.

Closing Thoughts

I’m still not entirely sure why compassion (especially self-compassion) isn’t a bigger thing, but I can see this lack in many of the cultures I’m immersed in. In American culture, I think lack of self-compassion arises from our Puritan roots and pathological individualism. In Asian culture, I’m less sure of where lack of compassion comes from, but it may relate to values of excellence and achievement. In Effective Altruism, I think lack of compassion—especially self-compassion—arises from the feeling of individual insignificance compared to the vast scale and neglectedness of other beings. This is not to say that compassion is entirely lacking in any of these spaces; Effective Altruism is full of highly compassionate people, for example. But this is to say that the compassion in these spaces is, by and large, conditional. In America, for example, we have little compassion for the homeless and “undeserving” poor. In Asian families, poor grades are likely to be met with anger, blame, and punishment. In Effective Altruism, we often blame and shame ourselves if we aren’t embodying a perfect being who constantly maximizes overall utility. In all these cases, compassion is conditional. Meet this standard, or you’re punished. Meet this standard, or you’re not a full person. And I can understand the evolutionary roots to this kind of thinking. Maybe there were cases in history where it was simply easier to ostracize someone who wasn’t acting in the group’s best interest. Emotions like contempt, coldness, and self-loathing may have been sufficient heuristics to approximate the idea of “for the survival of the group, this person needs to make changes.” But I think that, in today’s day and age, we can do better than that, and that (ironically) we need to do better than that to survive and flourish. And I believe that when we learn unconditional compassion, both for others and for ourselves, the outcomes really do tend to improve.

I think part of why I’m so passionate about compassion is my experience that true resilience doesn’t come from blaming or punishing or repressing our emotions. In my experience, true resilience comes from love and compassion. When my Grandpa was dying from Parkinson’s, my family tried to hide the pain, to pretend to everyone else that things were fine, to not talk about what was going on, even to each other. And all that led to were explosive fights, outbursts of anger, blaming and shaming, and nights where the air was thick with tension. Every day when I went to school, I had to pretend to be normal, that things were okay. Nobody knew what was happening at home. I’m sure my family thought that by bottling it up, they were protecting us kids from the worst, when they were really doing the exact opposite. I’m sure that they thought if we pretended things were normal, we would be more connected to others, when it just made us feel alone. I’m sure that they thought that by being hard on themselves, they were doing what they needed to keep the family going, when it was really what tore us apart. A few years later, a friend of mine’s sister was diagnosed with brain cancer. Their family was a lot more open about their struggles. His mom even made a blog dedicated to sharing their experiences. At the funeral, she talked about how she told her children (all boys) that it was okay to cry and to be sad, that they didn’t have to pretend to be stoic about it all. I wasn’t part of the family, so I don’t know what happened inside the house, but I really believe that their actions in public reflected how they related to one another in private. I’m sure they had hard times of their own. I’m sure they had moments where someone said something hurtful, where someone got overwhelmed and did something they regretted. But I think their culture of compassion and vulnerability helped to alleviate some of the suffering in a way. It allowed them to hold the hard times and to let them go. At the closing of the funeral, my friend’s parents allowed us to choose stones with words inscribed on them. The one I chose was inspire. What I saw that day was the true source of strength and resilience, that thing which could get us through horrible suffering, that thing which preserves the light of love and hope and goodness through all attempts to extinguish it.

In the last few years, I have been on a journey to unlearn my old, self-destructive habits, and to learn in their stead how to truly be compassionate, especially to myself. It’s not always been a linear journey. But the long-term trend is clear. I am becoming a more compassionate person. And I think I’ve gotten some cool side effects along the way. I’m more okay with failure and rejection than I used to be. My relationships with others are more harmonious and resilient. I’m doing more of the things I actually want to be doing, not less. I’m able to more effectively weather the emotional storms that come my way. And I take better care of myself, especially mentally. So I encourage you to work on growing your compassion, especially for yourself. I think it’s the right thing to do. And sometimes, it makes you feel better, too.