The Default Option
Your default option is to treat others the way you yourself were treated. If you didn’t experience healthy compassion and empathy, it will be hard to treat others with compassion.
The Default Option
Your default option is to treat others the way you yourself were treated. If you didn’t experience a lot of healthy compassion and empathy when you were growing up, you’ll probably find it very hard to treat others with compassion (until you learn how to do it). And the people you’ll have the least time and consideration for are the most important ones: yourself, your spouse, and your kids.
The good news is that God can solve any problem. If a lack of compassion for yourself and others is coming up as an issue for you, (and once again, let me reassure you that these days it’s an issue for almost everyone) – start talking to God about it, and ask Him to help you fix it.
Global Danger
While I was in the middle of writing this article, I had to take my daughter for some tutoring. The tutor lived in a newly built section of town that didn’t appear on my map, and she gave me terrible directions and the wrong street name.
The first time, I got completely lost, and arrived at the tutor’s house pretty late. I hate being late, and I was relieved that she was relatively understanding. The second time, I set out in plenty of time to make our appointment – and got stuck in a massive traffic jam right outside my house. I got to my appointment 15 minutes late – and this time, she let me have it with both barrels before I could even open my mouth.
I was ruining everything… she couldn’t do anything like this… I may as well not bother if this is how it was going to be… on and on she went. The woman was being paid for her time, regardless of how late we showed up. The problem was ours, not hers, if the lesson wasn’t achieving much.
My daughter went in for the rest of her lesson and as soon as the door closed behind her, I burst into tears. I felt so humiliated and inadequate.
Even though I knew what I was dealing with and even though I’m a grown-up, the whole experience was still quite traumatic and unpleasant, and it really brought home to me, once again, the devastating impact of verbal cruelty.
RECAP: Healthy Compassion
Healthy compassion means that you are able to see the other person’s side of things and able to empathize with their pain, without getting stepped on or taken advantage of. Remember the following points about healthy compassion:
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You can only have healthy compassion for others if you first have healthy compassion for yourself
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The effects of emotional pain, like shame, fear and guilt, are usually much greater, and much longer lasting, than the effects of physical pain.
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Verbal cruelty is the opposite of healthy compassion.
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Healthy compassion is not the norm in today’s world, which is one of the main reasons why so many people feel anxious and on edge when dealing with others.
How Lack of Compassion Affects Our Health
A lack of compassion can affect your emotional and mental health in the following ways:
EMOTIONALLY:
1) When you spend a lot of time around people with limited compassion and empathy, it can make you feel unloved, unloved, unsupported, disrespected, and even worthless. In turn, this can cause you to react with strong negative emotions, such as anger, fear and anxiety, or even vengeance. Those emotions are also extremely bad for your physical health, emotional well-being, and spirituality.
2) When you’re not treating others with enough healthy compassion, you usually end up feeling pretty bad about yourself afterwards. This can lead to you experiencing chronic feelings of guilt, self-hatred and shame, which can be even more painful and damaging to you, long-term, than a physical injury or trauma. Join the club, because healthy compassion is NOT the norm today!
PHYSICALLY:
A lack of compassion can keep you feeling wound-up and permanently stressed out, which has obvious implications for your physical health.
Next up – some real-life examples of compassion versus cruelty, to get a better feel for just how important this work is!
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