The Hard Problem of Compassion
What is compassion and why do we need it?
"Although most people think of compassion as niceness and a feeling of calm, it’s actually more like courage. Some people even describe it as a paradox because compassion involves feeling stress, which is not calm at all. But at the same time the fear circuitry goes down and caregiving and reward circuity increases. So, it ends up being distress with a centered feeling." - Dr. Buczynski
"What characterises compassion is that the parts of the nervous system that can transform a kind of fight -or-flight stress response, shift you into what looks more like a caregiving or a courage response. Sometimes alleviation of suffering means taking action, but sometimes it means just being with the suffering as it is." - Dr. McGonigal
"Compassion is also an act of courage in that we deliberately turn towards suffering rather than averting our gaze, or turning away, or being overwhelmed or frightened by it. And of course, things can be overwhelming and frightening, but compassion is that resonance that allows us to turn toward the difficulty anyway.
Courage, as we know from the Latin root, as the word cor, or heart, and in some way, when we see the suffering of another, or turn toward our own suffering willingly, it evokes a kind of courage because we’re willing to stand, to sit, to be present for this life with a kind of dignity and a kind of presence that can transform what is a terrible situation into something that becomes workable or that we can make a response to that changes it." - Dr. Kornfield
How Compassion Impacts Each Part of the Brain Part I: The Insula
There are four we want to bring to your attention:
First, the insula. Second, the amygdala. Third, the temporal parietal junction. And fourth, the pre-frontal cortex. Let’s look at how compassion impacts each part of the brain.
#1 The insula
The insula is a region in our brain that signals something's happening in our body. Our heart rate has gone up, perhaps we're having chills, perhaps we have a sensation of tightness or gastrointestinal discomfort. Whatever it is, something's happening in our body, and just to be simple, below the neck. the reason that's important in compassion is because the first thing that happens when we begin to have an experience that can end up being compassion, is that we feel moved by suffering, we feel something in our body.
When people are more compassionate, that insula response tends to be more robust. So that's, again, it's sort of like the gateway to compassion, to feeling something. And it gives you that sense, that urge, that this matters, that this is important. Your body is mobilizing some kind of response that is going to help you be of support or of assistance, or to do something about the circumstances that are tied to that suffering. Dr. Simon-Thomas
#2 The Amygdala
The amygdala is this little almond-shaped structure deep in your brain, and what it does is basically signal salients. So, something important is going on in your envi- ronment in a given moment. It can be internal, can be external. Something important just happened. If that's the case, your amygdala fires. It's like, "Bing," you got to pay attention to that thing that's important that's going on. You need to rally your resources to process infor- mation that is about that particular thing. That particular thing, again, can be internal, can be a pain on your own body, or it can be something you perceive or consider that’s going on out- side yourself. So in compassion, when we witness somebody else suffering, the amygdala re- sponds to that. It goes, hey, that’s important. You need to pay attention to it and start to process information that is related to that more in depth, and more, in a more sophisticated way. You can forget about the other thing you were paying attention to. Now, focus needs to go here. So, the amygdala plays an important part in orienting and deploying our attentional re- sources towards the target of, or the circumstances related to compassion.
So, the amygdala signals danger, but sometimes it’s over-activated and signals too much danger or even danger that is not even there. The amygdala will very easily get us over-aroused. And that can sometimes get in the way of compassion.
So, the amygdala needs to be there in the beginning to tell you, "Hey, this is what I need to pay attention to." It's probably pretty parallel and contemporaneous with the insula that's saying, "Hey, something's going on in our body. We got to get ready to act in a way that relates to the situation." But those, again, they are happening in the beginning, and if we don't have the next steps, the appraisal, the judgment about ourselves and other people or interpretation of the situation, both of those can lead us astray, and we can end up, again, needing to escape or feeling our own stress.
#3 Temporal Parietal Junction
So that’s the initial stage of our brain’s compassion response. The insula and the amygdala get us ready and get our attention. Now in order to take action, we have to make meaning out of that and that involves the Temporal Parietal Junction. It plays an important role in perspective-taking.
Now once we have this sense that, "Oh, something important is going on," the amygdala is like, "Hey, pay attention over here" and then we have this, "Oh, there's something going on in my body, and this is my getting mobilised to take action.” We're also taking in all the sensory information, and the amygdala sort of prioritises that, and these structures on the temporal parietal junction area, they are supporting our understanding of another person's perspective. If we fail to engage the temporoparietal junction or we engage it much less than in alterna- tively engaged, our midline structure and pathways that are more important for self-interest, then we may not actually end up feeling compassion. We may end up feeling, again, personal distress, or a sense of obligation, or disappointment about feeling like we have to do something costly.
When we do that cost-benefit analysis, “what's in it for me?” That's all very midline. The temporal parietal junction being the area that gets priority, which just happens when we’re actually experiencing compassion, we’re understanding the other person’s point of view, we’re relating the environment to their interests and their experience, and we’re using that to understand and consider, what can we do to be of service here? How can we be most helpful? How can we be most supportive? Instead of, how do I get my own needs met in this moment?
Because in reality, most of the time, when we are facing somebody else's suffering and com- passion is the right response, there is no own needs right then and there. And in fact, you'll get more out of going all the way through and feeling compassion in supporting someone than you will out of trying to run away or stifle your own feelings.
#4 The Pre-Frontal Cortex
It's the last part of our brain to have evolved and to have become as com- plex and densely enervated as it is. And the reason is that it's actually an area that's getting a lot of information and synthesizing it. It's getting that input from the temporoparietal junction, it's getting input from the amygdala and the insula, and it makes sense of it all. The prefrontal cortex comes in to help you strategize and think of, “What is it that I'm going to do? How am I going to do it?”
And the same time, it is offering some downregulation of the amygdala. Remember how I said the amygdala can't stay on? Once it's fired and said, "Hey, there's something that we need to pay attention to" it can't just keep firing, because if it is that will be registered as your own threat, that will be registered as something you have to do with yourself to address a sit- uation. So, assuming that there is no threat to you, it's the prefrontal cortex's role to down- regulate that salient signal.
And by doing that, make resources available to engage these car nurturance pathways that are in sort of midline hypothalamic and periaqueductal medial preoptic area regions of the brain.
So it’s always kind of a push and pull, like which structures are getting the most oxygen and glucose at any given moment? Part of that is dictated by the pre-frontal cortex, because it makes those decisions about where the resources go and what you’re gonna do next.
What does compassion do?
Compassion inhibits fear and activates courage.
Compassion shifts dynamics in specific brain regions so that we’re better able to manage difficult emotions and tolerate distress.
Compassion changes the body through the vagus nerve and also through enhanced heart rate variability. That’s important because these two changes in the body can build resilience for stress.
Compassion improves mental health and psychosocial functioning
Why is compassion hard?
The level of self-judgement, self-criticism and self-hatred is so common - especially in the western world and more recently within the current youth even in the east - that we find it hard to direct loving kindness and compassion towards ourselves - it can feel wrong, dystopia, egotistical even.
Unfortunately it is this same guilt and shame that we feel towards ourselves that turns into anger and resentment towards others.
Practice of Loving Kindness I do often
“May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be safe and protected. May I be well and healed and strong. May I hold my struggles with compassion and tenderness. May I be happy. I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be happy for wholesome reasons, for healthy reasons and for no reason whatsoever at all. No matter what I have done, or left undone, I deserve to be happy. Peaceful and happy.”