interesting.....
I tend to think of compassion/forgiveness along the same lines perhaps...I don't think they're the same, but surely interrelated. Anyway, I do have a capacity to feel compassion for others' faults/failings or even the hurts they've caused me......I think of my parents. I don't know if I even ever thought of 'forgiving' them per se, but over the years I realized that anger/bitterness toward them had dissipated and instead there was a compassion, an acceptance of what had happened/maybe a sorrow over it perhaps, but just a feeling of being sorry for them, for their failures, lacks, etc. Not sure how to describe it because I don't think it was a conscious event, but a gradual one.....maybe something in distancing/detaching from the anger. Why should I hold to anger/bitterness because of someone's hurtful words/actions toward me and hurt myself more, in a sense allow their hurt of me to be continued in perpetuity? Maybe that crosses over into looking out for my own emotional interests...
Nonetheless, though I have the capacity for compassion/empathy toward others, an ability to let go of anger/bitterness toward others, I seem to lack the same capacity yet for self-compassion.....at least this is how my Ts each saw it. Why not forgive myself, accept forgiveness for myself? Why not let go of anger/disgust for myself? Maybe I don't feel I really am forgivable, that I am only judgable, so to speak. I don't know, still working on that!
What I know is there needs to be a balance somehow.....for each of us, the balance will look a little different.....