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- Discover the essential elements for cultivating compassion, recognizing it as a dynamic emotional response that involves attuning to suffering without needing to fix it.
- Identify and understand barriers to compassion, such as empathic distress and pseudo-inefficacy.
- Learn practical techniques to enhance both your and your clients’ biological capacity for compassion, fostering greater emotional readiness and resilience.
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That was very insightful Thank you
Sign in to confirm I’m not a bot. How do I do that! Guess I won’t watch this
Amazing teaching, thank you so much. Could you please reopen day 3 for a little while if at all possible? I was half way through listening and taking notes and learning so much, but having a very busy week with work so could not finish it in time!
The energy was just amazing.
An a joy of observing what could have been a chat between old friends. ⭐
Waaaaaw thank you so much Kelly, the fact that compassion can flow from ones brain to another stood out for me, and many other insights I learned from your session.
Listening from Gombe state northeast Nigeria
Loved this, Kelly! Always a joy to watch your energy and insights
Could relate to this session.The words ” to be sensitive to pain and have the emotional readiness to respond to pain and suffering ” resonates in me.Fascinated with the new learning of the connection between Joy and Compassion.
Wonderful. Lovely to hear the importance of presence alone can be compassionate. The ability to transfer compassion and joy to assist in healing. This has helped me to really know and care rather than focus on how can I “reframe”. I always found that concept a distraction.
The breathing excercises were delightful and re opened my mind to the mind body concept.
Thank you, Kelly
Thank you for providing a macro approach of the process!!
I love Kelly and her own way to express the process of compassion and biological sense to relieve it. It helped me a lot, because I am helping a school in Mexico with no resources and this makes me so anguish, we are lacking of resources so much and overwhelms me, so I learned today this blocks my on joy in doing the work, and even creativity to help in other ways. So, thank you, I will go a practice how to have compassion from a self centered insead of anguish and worries.
Engaging and very informative!
I managed! I managed to watch your lecture, Kelly! You look like a sunshine, so beautiful and joyful 🙂 I wanted to share with you a concept from narrative practice by Michael White. He talked of DOUBLE LISTENING, and I find this concept very important in my work. It means that when someone is in distress and feels pain and sorrow etc., the helping specialist needs to listen carefully and respond with compassion, but listen not only to distress, but to WHAT IS ACTUALLY LACKING, what are the actual needs of a person, what they yearn for, what they want so drastically, and bring it to a person as a goal to be reached in some small manageable steps. Because I think that distress of a caregiver happens when they are listening just for distress, and not for positive meaning of this distress, for the goals and values their vis-a-vis feel disconnected from.
Hi, it is sad, but I can’t watch the videos 🙁 youtube is blocked in Russia, and vpn doesn’t help, as it seems that your site rejects it 🙁 well, thanks God there are books still! Really glad you are doing this conference, that’s a real feast for all psy people! Cheers to Kelly! Maybe there will be time when I’ll be able watching/listening to your lectures!
Need to celebrate, yes.
unfortunately, my thesis proves right that not all, but many, especially CBT clinicians need these strategies here, patients have deep feelings, which me as a recovering patient, I am usually the one writing most in these sections and most able to express my feelings. Right, without mindful techniques no compassion. You need to ground yourself even as a clinician to be able to be compassionate towards others. CBT alone lacks this aspect.
Witnessing compassion and putting myself in others´shoes I don´t need to practice as a high-sensitive person at all, as I rather get overwhelmed. Especially those with high-sensitivity or ADHD don´t need practice in compassion, as they know exactly too well what they need from the world and what they mostly don´t get-compassion, being listened and not judged. I can´t count how many psychologists and social workers i had in my life judging me and unable of showing compassion which shocks as they work with ppl not with animals. I could not take any new input from this video, but hope others did. Self-compassion to me is to give myself the assurance to care for myself even though many out there aren´t able to give it to me. As next video is, heal by connection, that´s true but not all ppl are fortunate enough to have a supporting presence in their lives able to show compassion. I remain positive to find new impulses in another video.
I know what you mean, esp re CBT, which can be quite overwhelming & annoying (speaking as a pt).same with DBT—where i worked i saw fellow group activities people hand a big packet of the DBT crisis plan to clients & told them to work on it. Trauma clients 😳 on the self-compassion topic, this isnt the same as self care, which is very important, just a portion of self-compassion. I understand the latter as assuming one has self-reflected re their behavior, how it is counterproductive or even evokes shame, when it harms or upsets others, or did in the past, or when we aren’t acting how we wish we could, and the behavior pushes people away, isolating us, when we have emotional meltdowns or other painful reactions to stuff that happens to or around us. By understanding that such reactions or any of these originates in our childhood or other significant life experiences, shaping us, or from the social i justice we were born into, raised in, or later abuses from toxic people, like gaslighting & gossip etc., as well as realizing that whatever the emotions come up, we can learn to acknowledge and accept that part of us with compassion, we can then move on to heal the wounds and take responsibility in a non-judging way for the resultant behaviors we have developed that dont serve us anymore. I found it a,so helped me to have more compassion toward some of the people who “messed up my life”. (Not yet all— a work in progress here!) This is my attempt to offer my perspective, and feel free to ignore it. Mostly i just want to suggest that there is more to self compassion than selfcare.
Hi, I cannot access the videos. It asks to sign in (to prove not a bot)but I have no sign in details.
This was so validating, thank you!
Nga mihi mahana no Aotearoa – warm greetings from New Zealand. “Compassion as a system you can be a part of” – beautiful insights into the neurobiological motivational roots of compassion.
In my tribal community we are re-educating traditional dances. Dancing with our ancestors and bringing back the joy of who we are as a community and see the youth increase it. Thank you for sharing your joy with us.
Unfortunately there is some confusion regarding compassion and empathy fatigue. This has been an exercise in head instead of heart.
There is no such thing as compassion fatigue. Compassion is our natural state. Compassion fatigue comes when we are deluded into thinking that we are separate from one another and that helping others or alleviating their suffering is a burden. It involves cerebration. True compassion or bodhichitta arises spontaneously when that delusion is shattered. It is demonstrated in life by the spontaneous action of running towards the accident to help or in war running to help the wounded. There is total spontaneous focus on the needs of others. There is no “me”. The exercises of tonglen and exchanging self for others are to reduce ego clinging:To know spontaneously that if circumstances were different that that dirty filthy homeless person could be me. It is heart understanding and not head thinking.
I hope that this is helpful.
BTW Kelly I enjoyed your UPSIDE book.
The meditations of Marcus Aurelius showed up in my science feed this morning. The philosophy of the stoics.
Interesting quote :
Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, “How unlucky that this should happen to me!” Not at all! Say instead, “How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint.”
— IV. 49, trans. Hicks
So beautifully said. Compassion only becomes fatiguing when thoughts, ideas or expectations get mixed into it. Pure compassion only deepens the soul and one’s intimacy & knowing of others. The Buddha defined compassion as “the quivering of the heart at the suffering of others.” (Dhammapada)
I help myself by helping others
I so appreciated Dr. Lee’s presentation and that she used slides. Many of us are visual learners and comprehend better when we see and hear any content. I was disappointed that Chris Germer did not have any slides. Shame is a critical concept for therapists to grasp, and without slides, I am not sure how well shame is understood by first-time learners especially. His interactive examples were helpful. Thanks and take care,
Sorry about that, Barbara. Dr. Germer’s slides are up now.
where do I sign in to view video from video viewer It says Im not signed in yet i am on the video page
One way of understanding compassion is as a biological emotion—as Dr. McGonigal explains.
But I think there is another way to understand compassion that is equally valid: As the internal, connective tissue of our Larger Selves (or souls). Said differently: As our most fundamental nature as spiritual beings. When babies are born, they have no sense that they are separate from anything else; they experience the world in perfect nonduality. Before we come into the world, I believe we all experience the pain & suffering of others no differently than we experience our own pain. The sensations of ‘self’ pain and ‘other’ pain are the same. Compassion is who we were before we were born.
I believe it is the formation of the Human Ego—which is essential for our advancement in the world—that blocks our inherent compassion. All blockages of compassion in our lifetime come from the human ego continually seeking control, security & approval. You can investigate and test this empirically—in terms of all the connections between ego function and lack of compassion.
Through meditation practice, my own compassion (karuna in Buddhist practice) as a therapist has become far more sensitive and generally feels boundless to me. The reason I believe I do not experience compassion fatigue is that I can immediately experience the positive effects of my caring, compassionate, gentle presence for others. I find extending compassion to others to be energizing & gratifying to me, even if the situation is dreadful. The gift of living in deep compassion and empathy—enabled by a dedicated meditation practice—is that you can feel a gentle boost of energy from extending compassion to others who are in pain.
Thank you for offering this wonderful program!
🙏
Looking forward to hearing Kelly!!