IMPORTANCE OF COMPASSION IN PSYCHOLOGY: “Taking a closer look at the subject of compassion”
The air that we breathe is just as critical to humans, so is compassion. And how many kindly, selfless and noble actions will have arisen throughout the course of history without compassion..?
Imagine, for say, a planet free of Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi…
It is impensable. It is impensable.
And what about kindness in today’s ordinary life? In reality, it requires fostering all kinds of constructive activities that are good for both people and communities if this quality has the potential to encourage brave acts…
If kindness can be viewed as a prerequisite for a meaningful life and a civilised community, it really is a philosophy worth discovering… Let us therefore begin our inquiry into this valuable, caring consistency.
The definition of psychological kindness
Practice kindness if you wish other citizens to be satisfied. Learn kindness if you want to be satisfied.
The Lord Dalai
The terms of the Dalai Lama are instructive as they apply both to giver and recipient’s moral advantages of sympathy… In other terms, the benefits of pity operate in all directions.
As such, sympathy is not an immediate reaction to another’s distress.
In compliance with the aforementioned description, the appearance of a homeless man on the sidewalk can vary due to how passers-by view this circumstance…
This is a quotation common to pity studies: “Do no judgments if you have no compassion” (Anne McCaffrey, goodreads.com)… This example is applicable to a statement. Judging the challenge of an individual is nothing more than judgement in absence of compassion… Compassion may be difficult to experience, and it demands on everyone to be caring, but it often calls for constructive action…
Look for compassion for yourself
The position of sympathy for oneself is often of concern to psychologists.
The idea of self-compassion is more popular in psychiatric literature because of the value of self-love and forgiveness for mental wellbeing…
The concept of “self-compassion versus self-judgment; .
Self-compassion is becoming more widespread in psychology owing to documented correlations with decreased fear, stress and ruminating (Neff, Kirkpatrick and Rude, 2007)… Psychological well-being and similarities have also improved (Neff et al, 2007; Zessin, Dickhäuser & Garbade, 2015)…
While literature shows that self-compassion is an essential defensive factor, a growing range of therapeutic treatments provide self-compassion as a central component of therapy…
Positive thinking and kindness
Considering the emphasis of positive psychology on fostering positive emotions, attributes and actions, which eventually promote positive wellbeing (Donaldson et al., 2014), compassion research is in line with positive psychologists’ interests… Science continually supports the role of caring in positive psychology.
From 1999 to 2013 Donaldson and colleagues (2014) reported 771 publications in 46 countries that deal with the goals of positive psychology through their systematic analysis of observational research of positive psychology…
The most popular subject examined was well-being. Studies have demonstrated kindness and appreciation to forecast better health (Donaldson et al., 2014)… The researchers documented multiple studies.
In comparison, attention was more commonly pursued and intense consciousness training was correlated with improvements in multiple beneficial effects, including self-compassion… There are no doubts that caring remains a trait that deserves constant focus and study in positive psychology…
Research and Studies
An increasing range of academic studies investigate the advantages and correlations of sympathy.
How essential and appropriate is compassion?
There have been several exciting research studies within the area.
Seppala, Rossomando and James (2013), also in the physiological domain, define social relations as an important drive to human behaviour… Since we are a strongly relational species it is a vital feature of stable human adjustment to cultivate meaningful ties…
Setting those relations includes the willingness to express and identify with others care and concern… The latter term was called “perspective taking” and is of interest I (Kashdan, & Ciarrochi, 2013)…
Compassion and understanding are essential components of healthy and caring partnerships.
Not only does concern towards others help one feel stronger, but self-compassion also plays a vital role for well-being… Sadly people sometimes disbelieve in errors they can comfortably forgive others. However we improve our psychological wellbeing and well being as we reach past our mistakes and deal with forgiveness and empathy…
Both studies and psychologists find exciting results through the connections of sympathy and self-compassion with different optimistic results…
Compassion’s worth and strength
The Dalai Lama states:
Each of us should seek to disseminate love in the hearts of our people. Western cultures are now putting tremendous emphasis on filling the human brain,” but nobody seems to think about compassion filling the human heart…” That’s what religion’s actual position is. (Quotegarden.com).
This quotation is applicable to medical practise, in which medical education puts tremendous focus on knowledge achievement—with no consideration paid to humane instruction…
Patients indicated that they did not pay heed to sympathy in the medical profession, with just 53 percent of injured patients reporting sympathetic treatment (Lown, Rosen and Marttila 2011)…
However in terms of mental and physical wellbeing for those who suffer severe or stressful health conditions, bedside manner creates a major difference… In addition, it is important to prevent potential trips by just one carefree medical practitioner…
In the medical profession, of necessity, the importance and strength of kindness are important…
When patients experience suffering, distress and terror, soul caring plays an important function in cure and recovery…
Researchers observed that greater concern towards one’s self and compassionate affection is the predictive of longer survival, as a part of a 17 year prospective analysis of HIV patients (Ironson, Kremer & Lucette 2018)… This revelation bears testimony to the influence of love.
Although the importance of compassion in healthcare has increased among scholars, especially in the field of nursing, the emphasis is still overlooked…
The mother used social media amid her despair to relay her perspective in order to respect nurses’ kindness…
She conveyed appreciation to her nurses by mentioning several tender and caring gestures during her ordeal in her ‘thank you’ note…
This beautiful letter says more about the need and power of compassion for the infirm. Who also embody healthcare practitioners. Moreover, who feeds patients in their worst nightmare, especially in circumstances like this.
This essay describes a team of compassionate people who appeared to operate together to completely satisfy the mental, psychological and physical needs of a grieving family… Such qualifications go well beyond medical school, demonstrating a deep understanding and sensitivity which represents the depth of compassion, generosity and affection…
Training caring health workers is difficult, so everyone has a different voice and gets sympathy…
Bramley and Matiti (2014) examined kindness during their treatment in their qualitative analysis of hospital patients in the UK…
Patients have described the following forms of nursing compassion:
- Sympathy has been recorded to be related strongly to treatment, including support, patient time and care…
- The need of nurses to recognise that lack of sympathy might sound. To a patient was deemed essential and included empathy…
- Although patients did not waver with the importance of kindness they did not argue with whether it was a teachable trait or an inherent attribute…
There is no explanation why health care sensitivity is a requirement. For nurses alone the doctors are often responsible for listening. To patients so as to minimise distress and encourage well-being and coping—
especially for patients with severe diseases…
One research showed that the fear of doctors among. Cancer patients was substantially diminished by presenting patients with a 40-second video of sympathy (Fogarty, CurBow & Wingard, et al., 1999)… In comparison, doctors were ranked as higher in treatment, sympathy and comfort among the patients who watched this short film…
We are all aware of the flight footage, which instructs parents to provide their child with oxygen… This is because we will only support anyone otherwise we have little to giv. If we take care of ourselves first.
In addition, the idea of self-compassion in health science is becoming particularly relevant. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff may operate extremely exhaustingly for long hours. For such medical practitioners, self-compassion is an effective means of practising self-care and empathy to avoid burnout…
For illustration, imagine a nurse or doctor. Who operates in a busy emergency department for a 12-hour period .There are occasions when he/she will get bored of eating; the entire time the tension and sense of personal obligation come with circumstances of life or death…
The medical practitioner would be best prepared to manage high-stress circumstances. By restructuring cognitions mentally in a manner compatible with self-compassion… (i.e. by recognising that certain incidents go beyond one’s control).
Absolutely no study or teaching emphases on self-compassion . Notwithstanding the rational rationale for greater self-compassion among health-care staff (inclusive of advantages for patients)…
Instead, doctors appear to esteem such human characteristics as perfectionism (Mills & Chapman, 2016), a significant mistake… After all, self-pity predicts decreased distress and improved emotional. Well-being (Neff et al., 2007) –
As such, sympathy is not an immediate reaction to another’s distress. It is a reaction that only happens when it is viewed as extreme, unreasonable and connected.
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