Comments on: Compassion: An Antidote to Anger?

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By: What Everyone Should Know About the Mental Boost from Altruism | Mindfulness and Psychotherapy

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:26:07 +0000

[...] because they are such good nutrition for our health and well-being. Compassion has been called an antidote to anger and kindness has been called and antidote to fear. [...]

By: Exploring the Upside of Depression | Mindfulness and Psychotherapy

Exploring the Upside of Depression | Mindfulness and Psychotherapy — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:44:49 +0000

[...] to notice it again in the future which is one of the things that this article is alluding to, have compassion and empathy for others who are struggling, and provides the opportunity for us to learn how to relate to our [...]

By: 5 Keys to Emotional Freedom: An Interview with Tara Brach | Mindfulness and Psychotherapy

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:56:32 +0000

[...] is hard to offer yourself care, imagine someone that loves you beholding the suffering and sending compassion to your heart. Gradually you will sense that compassion as part of your own [...]

By: Katrin R.

Katrin R. — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:22:09 +0000

Good comments. lisa, it also really helped me with my mother to understand her better and where she came from. To sort out what feelings belong to me and which to her. I like to call it the ‘export/import’ business.

My mother projected a lot of feelings she did not want onto us, her daughters, and we in turn imported them. (different feelings for different daughters)

For example, I imported the guilt she exported. She did not feel it but then at the same time the feelings she denied would ooze out from under her skin.

I really had to role reverse with her and actually become her, and this goes back to long before we were even born.

Gladtobealive, I cannot really answer your questions but I have an aunt who is a psychologist, and she sort of uses her training as a defense mechanism.

So, i have noticed that she hardly ever gets angry bit instead substitutes pity for anger.

But pity is not a kind thing to do; it’s not really empathy. I really feel it’s just an arrogant way of substituting for anger, and a way of feeling superior. it’s nothing like relating, whereas compassion is relating.

Now, i am not always in the mood to consider every aspect of another person at every moment of my life. Why should I? Yet, I am still very compassionate, and I never compare myself while I listen and relate. i have found that you cannot have empathy and compare yourself with the other at the same time.

I have mostly found, that if I listen long and deeply enough to another person, I can pretty much understand everyone. it’s also OK with me not to feel like being Mrs. jesus Christ ever second of my life, and especially since I no longer carry the guilt of everyone’s sins in the entire universe on my shoulders. (not edited)

By: Lisa

Lisa — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:00:17 +0000

Compassion has helped me a lot recently. It is a concept I knew of before, but I always saw it as a sign of weakness because I felt it undermined one of the mottos in my life: because no one had ever felt compassion towards me, or not in a way that I noticed, I thought that one has just to toughen up and keep going because no one will help you and whining will get you nowhere. I never thought of understanding where people came from, to see the reasons for their pain, suffering, anger, violence, etc.
Putting myself on people’s shoes has been very healing. For instance, a lot of the issues I have always had with my mom (related to her insistence that I become a certain kind of woman she wanted with a specific physical appearance -thin) do not make so angry anymore since I started to study where she came from and what she wanted for me: having been raised the way the was, her decisions about me where the ones she probably thought would be best, even though I felt differently. And blaming her for actions she never had the chance to explore (I mean, she could have listened more to me, and think more critically, but she never really had the opportunity to do it therapeutically) gets no one anywhere. It simply makes me angry. I held on to that anger for so long. I am not saying anger is always negative, but when it becomes defining, it just takes over your entire life. It is a very powerful emotion. My anger made me reactive towards everything I thought my mother represented: her ideas, her clothes, her tastes, her food… Everything she liked I automatically avoided because I promised myself I would never be like her. My anger made me define my life in opposition to hers, a life in the negative, instead of a life of affirmation, a live of reaction, instead of a life of development and construction.
Since I started trying to understand her instead of judging her, things have become a lot smoother. I have been able to actually see her good qualities and appreciate them; I have been able to see how I mistreated her, however “justified” my reactions might have been. But, and this is I think most important, I would have never been able to feel compassion towards her had I not been able to feel it towards me. In the same way that my mom’s actions were partly the result of her upbringing and of a genuine desire to do what she thought would be best for me (however misguided), I have been able to understand that my negative reaction towards her also makes a lot of sense considering my own environment. That understanding has led me to feel responsible for my actions, but not guilty. Thus, I will be able to change them in a way that I think will be more constructive, instead of being stuck on what I should have done but never did.

By: gladtobealive

gladtobealive — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:46:07 +0000

this was helpful. One thought: when you have pity, pity moves one to take action to relieve it. The problem is some people don’t want your active help and block it. This frustrates the process of resolving or softening the anger so that it doesnt escalate into hostility and aggression–so one is left frustratedly irritated. Why is it that I can feel my sisters negative emotions and grapplings although she lives in another state and has not communicated them to me? This baffles me. When we are in the same room together I feel her negative emotions and react to them in a negative way –its as if they are bullying me. Got any ideas? I have told my sister that I found the definition of empathy: the ability to feel another’s pain in your heart. I feel that, but don’t want to because my sister wont accept my desperate attempts to help her relieve it…it results in both of us feeling the negativity–and part of my motive to relieve her is so that I am not bothered by it. How can this be? I have heard twins have this phenonamon.

By: Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:33:11 +0000

Hello Vyuti,

Most of us put ourselves last on our to-do lists and our own worst critics. However, sometimes we do this as a way to give voice to our own feelings that we are not acknowledging.

By: vyuti

vyuti — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:47:27 +0000

Can one be full of compassion for others but be very self-critical? I have found this in my own behaviour.
These lines have made me wonder
“So as we cultivate a practice of nonjudgmentally placing kind attention on our own experience, we naturally begin to elicit feelings of self-compassion which then begins to flow outwards to others.”

By: Evan

Evan — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:17:47 +0000

Isn’t talking about ‘kind’ attention a kind of judgement? (One that I agree with and endorse.)