'People want to help you. Let them': how to be compassionate in a crisis
by Paul Gilbert and Hannah Gilbert from Science | The Guardian on (#51VZR)
Acting compassionately isn't just about kindness, but about wanting to halt suffering. Right now, we must be wise - and set a template for the future
In times of tragedy and trauma, we need compassion to get us through. But what do we mean by compassion? It is different from kindness and empathy, although these are ways of being compassionate. Our clinical work has led us to define compassion as the motivation to engage with distress and suffering and work to find ways to alleviate and prevent it.
So, to build a more compassionate mind, we need first to build enough courage to engage with pain and suffering and, second, commit to learning how best to help ourselves deal with this, and then do it.
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