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Title: Compassion – A Powerful Doorway to Personal Growth Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul URL: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 874 Category: Personal Growth
Compassion – A Powerful Doorway to Personal Growth By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
What if there was one choice you could make that would change everything in your life for better? Actually, there is. It’s choice to move out of judgment and into compassion for yourself and others.
Compassion is defined as a deep caring for pain of others, often accompanied by a desire to help. There is nothing that feels more wonderful and comforting than experiencing another’s compassionate response to our painful feelings and experiences.
However, it’s interesting that compassion is never defined in terms of oneself. Yet, compassion is one of greatest gifts we can give to ourselves. In fact, when we give compassion to others but not to ourselves, we often end up feeling alone, worn out, and uncared for.
Jackie is a good example of a person who has compassion for others but not for herself. She is a very caring mother and wife. She listens compassionately to her husband’s work problems and does all she can to help him, even when she is having her own work problems. She is always there for her children, helping them with whatever problems arise, as well as for her co-workers. Everyone sees Jackie as a very loving person – and she is. So why is she often unhappy? Why is she often so fatigued and depleted? The problem is that Jackie is completely out of touch with her own feelings.
Jackie is so focused on meeting everyone else’s needs that she never tunes into herself and her own feelings and needs. She doesn’t know when she is tired or when she needs time for herself. She doesn’t know when she is feeling sad, lonely, or anxious. Because she has no compassion for herself, she finds herself using food to fill inner emptiness that is result of not taking loving care of herself.
Richard, on other hand, lacks compassion for both himself and others. While it may seem as if he has compassion for himself, he also is not tuned into his own feelings. It seems like Richard has compassion for himself because he does what he wants – buys what he wants, goes after what he wants, spends time way he wants. But his choices are coming from his fears and his addictive need to fill up from outside with things and approval rather than from love and compassion for himself. In addition, he is usually unconscious regarding effect his behavior has on others. He keeps people waiting, doesn’t do what he says he is going to do, and becomes judgmental rather than compassionate in face of another’s difficulties. Instead of caring when his wife is tired or needs help, he gets resistant and resentful that she isn’t there for him or is asking something of him.
