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08 March 2024
The word compassion comes from ‘com’ (with) and ‘passion’ (suffer). It means to suffer together. Nonetheless, compassion goes beyond just suffering as it involves accepting suffering and wanting to help. As described by Prof. Paul Gilbert (Gilbert et al., 2014), compassion involves two parts engagement (turning toward pain and suffering) and alleviation (taking action to relieve pain and suffering).
Although our brains evolved to care for our own well-being and that of others, often we really struggle with self-care, especially when we experience traumatic events early in life. 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 (given by our parents) and they are ‘modified’ by the environment around us (as epigenetic research is teaching us). For instance, if someone has not been able to experience emotional attunement with their caregiver, they will find it difficult to experience and recognise these emotions in others. In therapy, the presence of a compassionate therapist, who is 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.
In Mindful Interbeing Mirror Therapy (MIMT), the use of the mirror helps the patient-therapist to be aware of the emotional relationship patients have with themselves; it is like the patients are naked in front of their own shame, disgusted and they are exposed at the same time to the gaze of the therapist who recognises that emotion but reflects back care and acceptance, in a word, ‘compassion.’
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