Credit: Johannes Plenio, Pexels
08 August 2021
Compassionate awareness is how we describe the use of compassion in Mindful Interbeing Mirror Therapy (MIMT).
One of the most commonly cited definitions of Mindfulness is ‘awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally’ (Kabat-Zinn, 1994).
Mindfulness is an essential component of MIMT, where the patient is constantly guided to pay attention to each aspect of the experience of being and feeling, moment by moment. However in MIMT, the awareness is not ‘neutral’ as in other psychological approaches but ‘compassionate’. Compassion (the feeling of sorrow or deep tenderness for one who is suffering or experiencing misfortune, literally ‘a suffering with another’) is the deep understanding and feeling of another’s suffering. In MIMT the ‘suffering self’ is reflected in the mirror, it is there in front of the patient and the therapist and cannot be ignored.
The patient reacts to his/her image reflected with certain emotions (often anger, disgust, shame) and, with the help of the therapist, will learn to experience compassion toward that part of self that is suffering. The way MIMT sees compassion is very close to the concept of unconditional love, which is an ability to understand and participate in another’s suffering, creating a deep emotional connection between two or more beings.
As we know, the interaction between caregiver and new-born is crucial in the development of compassion and self-compassion. We are born with certain genes (which are given to us by our parents) and they are ‘modified’ by the environment around us (this is what the epigenetic researches are teaching us). For instance, if someone has not been able to experience emotional attunement with their care giver, he/she will find it difficult to experience and recognise these emotions in others. In therapy, the presence of a compassionate therapist, able to recognise the emotional states of the patient, will at first activate threat, fear and avoidance in the patient who is not used to this experience. The use of the mirror will help the patient-therapist to be aware of the emotional relationship the patient has with himself/herself (and the perception of self); it is like the patient is naked in front of his/her own shame, disgust and he/she is exposed at the same time to the gaze of the therapist who recognises that emotion but gives back an opposite emotion of care and acceptance, in a word, ‘compassion.’
The patient recognises the compassion on the gaze of the therapist but experiences discomfort and often cannot tolerate this as it is a new experience. Patients who have experienced complex trauma, often are not able to recognise the compassion in the gaze of the therapist and may attribute a negative connotation to it. The lack of experience as to where their emotions were reflected and attuned in the interaction with the care giver, has caused an inability to recognise other people’s emotions correctly, and a tendency to attribute to the other the emotion that more frequently their caregiver expressed toward them. So if a child has experienced anger in response to his/her sadness, he/she will expect and experience anger in the relationship with the therapist when he/she is feeling sadness. It is the therapist role to reassure the patient and guide him/her within the window of tolerance and gradually learn to experience compassion, which will be a transformative experience.
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