The American Psychological Association (APA) defines compassion as “a strong feeling of sympathy with another person’s feelings of sorrow or distress, usually involving a desire to help or comfort that person” (APA, 2020).
Roshi Joan Halifax says that compassion is comprised of non-compassion elements that are in dynamical interaction with each other, and that give rise to compassion in a non-linear way (CCARE, 2013). The non-compassion elements are in three dimensions: attentional balance, cognition, and embodiment.
Attentional balance
Attentional balance is our capacity to attend, whether focused attention (concentration) or open presence (awareness). Halifax describes the quality of attention as high resolution and vividness. It is the ability to have an attentional field that is fundamentally stable so we can perceive things accurately, the ability to be able to hold our attention for more than a moment – in a world where attention is divided and dispersed. The ability to hold affective balance is also important. Affect biases our attention, influencing pro-sociality and caring about people (CCARE, 2013).
Cognition
To be able to recall our intention as aligned with our values and our ethical baseline; insight – the ability to discern clearly the nature of reality, to be able to have a metacognitive perspective; to have self-awareness and self-regulation, to be able to distinguish self from other; and to not be attached to outcome (CCARE, 2013).
Embodiment
Introceptivity, the ability to read one’s visceral processes. In sensing into one’s own experiences, and in sensing into the experiences of others, very similar neural pathways are activated (CCARE, 2013).
Empathy
To have compassion you have to have some level of arousal, some empathy, sympathy, care or concern. When empathy is not regulated people go into personal distress, and often into what is called compassion burnout, but is actually empathy burnout. Empathy burnout makes sense particularly in the context of evolution, in that emotions are inherently exaggerated. The APA defines empathy as:
Understanding a person from his or her frame of reference rather than one’s own, or vicariously experiencing that person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. Empathy does not, of itself, entail motivation to be of assistance, although it may turn into sympathy or personal distress, which may result in action. In psychotherapy, therapist empathy for the client can be a path to comprehension of the client’s cognitions, affects, motivations, or behaviors.
(APA, 2020)
The action that may result from the personal distress of empathetic or affective over-arousal is not necessarily kind or compassionate; it may result in avoidance or unkindness.
The APA (2020) defines introception as a personality trait reflecting the extent to which a person is attentive to understanding the needs, motives, and experiences of himself or herself and others. Introception, or embodiment, is attentive.
Attention is the prerequisite for compassion
Prerequisite for compassion is holding attentional stability and affect (emotional or mood) stability, being cognitively attentive, and embodied attentiveness. Attention is also the prerequisite for self-regulating over-arousal. Over-arousal and false perceptions were mechanisms for survival in pre-modern times, but what we need now is appropriate levels of arousal and the ability to discern reality from false perceptions. Mindfulness is an effective way towards achieving this.
GRACE
GRACE is an acronym/mnemonic to describe what is required for compassion to be present.
Gather your attention: Pausing, breathing, bringing your attention to your body to stabilize your mind.
Recall your intention: remembering why you have chosen to serve, tuning in to your values.
Attune first to self, and then to other: noticing what is going on in your own mind and body, and then what is going on for the other. (With practice, attuning to self takes just a moment or two.)
Consider what will serve: drawing on your expertise, knowledge and experience, and at the same time being open to a fresh perspective.
Engage and enact: compassion arises out of the connection we have created; enacting is co-creating a dynamic, morally-grounded situation, out of which arises principled compassion.
An additional, but equally important, ‘E’ is ‘end’: mark the end of the interaction by releasing, letting go, breathing out, and explicitly recognizing internally when the encounter is over. (Halifax, n.d.)