[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.

[Nightlight]

Seems to be a bit about what psychology is all about really. There are many different and often conflicting theories. It does make it a bit confusing when one theorist is convinced that their view is the only correct one. I think it's the sort of stuff that needs a lot of research, and I guess there some evidence out there to support both of those ideas. Not that that makes it any less confusing currently.

[autotelica]

I don't agree that there is a relationship between the compassion you have towards others and the compassion that you have for yourself. Just like I don't agree that you can't love others before you love yourself.

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.

For me, compassion for myself (I actually think of it as empathy for myself because I was so disconnected from my own experience) only came when I realized my empathy for others who had been through similar experiences. Realizing I could feel anger and grief for the suffering other CSA survivors had gone through made it hard to continue denying that same anger and grief for my own situation. That was the absolute greatest gift I received from my group therapy experience--compassion/empathy for myself.

[WikidPissah]

Just from my own experience I can say the first statement is wrong. I am really compassionate towards other people, no compassion for myself. I have always worked with dv victims, homeless, troubled youth, etc. No empathy for myself, not even now.

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by Apteryx

I am very suspicious of absolutes used about human behaviour - they are always based on studies on a limited set of people.

[stopdog]

I would take everything written by anyone about psychology or therapy with a whole box of salt.
Even the second statement is questionable. I read all of these sorts of things with a "so far we have/have not found" added to them - "So far, there has been found no correlation between..."
But admittedly, I do not believe in absolutes in general. In psychology they are just ridiculous.

Originally Posted by Apteryx

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.

All generalisations are false!!

Originally Posted by stopdog

I would take everything written by anyone about psychology or therapy with a whole box of salt.
Even the second statement is questionable. I read all of these sorts of things with a "so far we have/have not found" added to them - "So far, there has been found no correlation between..."
But admittedly, I do not believe in absolutes in general. In psychology they are just ridiculous.

Well, sure, it isn't really possible to prove a negative with absolute certainly, is it. But given that there are plenty of examples of people who exhibit one of the traits and not the other one, it doesn't seem to fill any practical purpose (other than to make some people feel like non-people) to claim that the one depends on the other.

[stopdog]

Apt - I am not disagreeing - just saying I find all of psychology to be imprecise and mostly made up of what they think rather than science, and even with science, it is just so far - not an absolute. I may be taking skepticism a step further, but that is all.

[WikidPissah]

I tend to agree that psychology is not a science. That's probably why I detest it so much, I tend to think concretely. If x = 64, there is no way that it can also equal 32, 27. 198...etc. I asked my first shrink, "Can't you just give me a brain scan and fix what's wrong?". "Well, no. actually we can't"

"Ma'am, you have a broken leg."
"But you didn't xray it."
"Well, it's the kind of break that doesn't show up in xrays."
"hmmmm"
"Use these crutches for several years and it may or may not improve."
"May or may not? Wtf?"
"It depends on how badly you want to."

[critterlady]

It is more of an art than a science in many respects. There are some aspects, like neuroplasticity, that do have a very strong scientific evidence base. But since the brain and the mind are two separate things and one can be visualized and the other cannot, science is bound to be limited in its understanding of the mind.

[KazzaX]

You can't really do studies on this kinda thing because everyone is so different and its a wishy-washy type thing, which is hard to convert to numbers (to see what the study results are). So there isn't much research on this type of thing - thats probably why one therapy says one thing and another therapy type says the opposite. Everyone is just taking a guess, hehe

From the point of view of my 50 years of life experience, I've come to conclude for myself that different studies say different things because people are so very different, we're all individuals, with our own quirks and stuff, and I think it's sorta like chords on a piano keyboard - they're different notes, but they're all playing music - and it's the music that's made that's the important stuff. I like one song, somebody else likes another - or one study turns on a light bulb for me, another study might turn on a light bulb for somebody else. That's just how I see it, anyway!

[Inedible]

Personally I have never really seen compassion as something to cultivate anyway. It generally refers to sharing the pain of other people, or of your own somehow. Pain is all too common and there is no need to practice experiencing pain. Even so, it can't really be avoided that compassion will increase once anger and fear decrease. There are a lot of things that get in the way of properly seeing yourself or everyone else. I get that compassion is promoted as a good thing because it gets around those kinds of barriers that keep people living in their own isolated existences - I just think it works the other way around. The barriers fall first, to some extent, and when they have sufficiently softened compassion can make a showy deal of pushing down more of them. So if you want to practice and cultivate something, I would suggest learning to enjoy seeing any sign of pleasure and satisfaction. Do this to the point where you can be happy when something good happens even if you had been in a bad mood. Let it generalize to the point where you can enjoy happiness whether it is your own or someone else's. The point is to soften your own obstacles to reaching outward. It doesn't matter if you find it easier to start on the outside and work inward, or start on the inside and work outward. Positive emotions are going to make the barriers grow thinner and negative emotions tend to build up new layers. That's why I don't think it is a good thing to practice experiencing more of anyone's pain. Let it come when it does, without fighting it - because resisting pain magnifies it. That's true of physical and emotional pain. It is instinctive and automatic to resist pain. Training in compassion is probably meant to make this resistance less automatic. You may also find that resistance toward enjoying the pleasure of people you dislike or even yourself. This resistance will also be automatic. I just think that it is better to spend more time working on allowing more enjoyment into your life instead of allowing in more pain.

Sitting, if you don't mind me asking. Why does it 'bother' you? To be honest, Id read the same conflicting pieces of info, think about it for a full 2 seconds and then carry on scratching my arse.

[Anne2.0]

From where I sit, even the so-called sciences have this sort of disagreement a lot of the time. In lawsuits for medical malpractice, one MD with scads of degrees and other qualifications says procedure caused death, another equally laden with an important vita, says it didn't. One engineer says X caused the plane to go down, another says Y. Only in a lab where conditions are carefully controlled does "science" seem to be exact. In real life, which is messy and generally occurs outside the scientific laboratory, very little can be predicted with much regularity. And everyone can always model the adversarial position that a lawyer takes-- use what makes sense to you and supports your own theories, and leave aside the rest.

I think there is something to Brene Brown's position, as I have experienced things. I also think there is something to the other position that one can be compassionate for others and not oneself; this was true for me for many years. I have also experienced increased compassion and perhaps more importantly, understanding as my own self acceptance and compassion has grown. In general, I find it less interesting whether the absolute relationship between self and other compassion is or isn't related, and more interesting to understand how we can increase self-compassion as well as compassion for others.

[sittingatwatersedge]

Originally Posted by Apteryx

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. .

actually, Brown strongly based her statement on extensive research done over at least a five year period.

but I don't agree with her either. I wish I could hear someone who does state this explain why that is so. In detail. I don't understand it, and don't accept it.

[sittingatwatersedge]

Originally Posted by earthmamma

Sitting, if you don't mind me asking. Why does it 'bother' you?

gee maybe because we are asked to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Considering the source of that, I am certain it can be done,
but I'm not at all certain how to go about it,
when it seems that in many cases I love my neighbor more.

I ask... is 'loving my neighbor more' even possible?
in my case, maybe it could just be a blatant illusion?

and THAT bothers me.

[wotchermuggle]

Well, I'm living proof that you don't need to have compassion for yourself to have compassion for others.

The problem is that there are very few universal truths that people can agree on.

Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge

gee maybe because we are asked to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Considering the source of that, I am certain it can be done,
but I'm not at all certain how to go about it,
when it seems that in many cases I love my neighbor more.

I ask... is 'loving my neighbor more' even possible?
in my case, maybe it could just be a blatant illusion?

and THAT bothers me.

Oh your coming from this at a bibilcal angle. I guess because I am a heathen I don't ponder such questions. I just do it from an internal direction without having to 2nd guess it. Authenticity is the clue I belief.

[likewater]

for me, i've seen a correlation that can work both ways between self compassion and compassion for others, but the human spirit and universe is much too complex and mysterious to be explained in absolutes and comprehended by our brains, and i am glad. we are miraculous creatures and although we are capable of great evil, we are also capable of unimaginable good. we are also not limited to dxs and psychological norms and theories, thank goodness.

[Emotionally Dead]

This is why I don't live by a set of rules, guidelines, or "theories". I follow my own.

I have never truly loved myself but I loved my ex more than life itself. I love my family and certain friends to death. In fact, I have a love and compassion for everyone. Including people I don't know or have never met. The theory that one can't love others until they love theirselves is bull because of that fact. You can love others before you love yourself, you can love yourself before you love others, and you can have love for both yourself and other people. This means no one theory is correct. It is a mixture of all of them. Don't feel bad if they confuse you, they aren't all correct. What is correct is the fact that you can love others without their being a correlation between the love of yourself and the love of other people.

[(JD)]

To me, the person who wrote the first is just believing something they have been told, and maybe worked out for them. I have to stick with the PhD (of course ) because we find many very sorrowful people who don't take care of themselves, don't love themselves, don't feel good about themselves but who might volunteer to help homeless, or give what they have to raise their grandchild, etc.

I think having compassion for oneself does help how the other giving makes one feel... in the enjoyment realm etc.

[QuietCat]

I have always heard that people feel more compassion for others than they do themselves, so I disagree that you have to feel compassion for self first. T is always asking me if I would be as hard on a friend as I am on myself, and the answer is usually "no".