Compassion has two components:
A common feeling, one rooted in the experience and understanding of suffering, which is shared with the wider world – so forming a shared experience with other people (and, to some extent, a shared experience with other beings)
A way of engaging with the world that seeks to alleviate the suffering (including discomfort, fear, doubt, stress, pain) of others and/or oneself
Training in compassion is about learning to bring balance to the three types of emotion systems we all have:
The Threat System, which focuses on threats to our sense of self-protection
The Incentive System, which focuses on our goals, wants and achievements
The Contentment System, which focuses on safeness and a sense of connectedness
Professor Paul Gilbert describes compassion as “behaviour that aims to nurture, look after, teach, guide, mentor, soothe, protect, and offer feelings of acceptance and belonging in order to benefit another person”. In a similar way to the one by which we care about and nurture other people, we can also care about and nurture ourselves. Leading academics, Neff and Pommier, describe the three components of self-compassion as being:
It has been suggested that compassion includes Mindfulness but goes beyond it to include and engage the Contentment System, which both soothes us and builds our sense of “affiliation” (belonging/relationship/connectedness – see Christopher Germer, Personal Communication, 2013).
