Quote:
Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge
Am reading Brene Brown's "Gifts of Imperfection", in which she states that one cannot have compassion for others without having compassion for oneself. She goes further - the two, she says, are directly proportional. 
on the other hand, a PhD in the Psychology Today blogosphere writes >> ' There is no correlation between the trait of self-compassion and feelings of compassion towards others.' 
These are just the two most recent *conflicting* statements I've heard form the overall T community on this subject; many, many others.
Sheesh, make up your mind, people.  |
The first statement (especially the "directly proportional" part) is trivially false - Brown is expressing an opinion in the form of a truth statement. Neff's work on the other hand is based on research which seems reasonably valid. What she is saying is simply that people can be self-compassionate
and compassionate towards other people, but they can also be one of those things without the other.
I am very suspicious of absolutes used about human behaviour - they are always based on studies on a limited set of people. Brown seems to have a bit of a narrow outlook and I would take what she says with a grain of salt.