The Health Benefits of Compassion

The Health Benefits of Compassion

The Health Benefits of Compassion

 

Cultivating compassion in your life brings not only inner peace but good health.

If you want to be a healthy human in 2023, you understand that there are health benefits to mindfulness. Above and beyond good sleep, exercise, nutrition, and connection via self-love and thus the love of others, cultivating compassion makes you a better and healthier person.

You can choose to be more compassionate and thus have a better life for yourself and those whom you impact. Why not chose to understand the health benefits of practicing compassion in your life today?

 

Physicians as Healers – Compassion or Empathy?

Physicians are, by definition, healers. Our actual job is to improve the health of individuals and communities. It seems like our job is to click boxes and to bill for services, but the truth is that we went into medicine because we are healers.

As healers, we are often wounded by what we see and feel during our job. Empathy can actually wound us as we sense and take on the pain of others.

Wait, is empathy bad? It can be if you internalize the pain and carry it with you.

Perhaps the difference between compassion and empathy is what you do with the carried pain. Is that pain yours, or does it more rightly belong somewhere else or to someone else?

I remember a shift where I told a mother and father that their child had died. Even though everyone in the room expected the outcome for the better part of a week, it still sucked. It was hard and painful, and many heartbreaks and shattered dreams passed through the room in waves.

Of course, you cannot help but be affected by such devastation, but is that pain yours to internalize and carry with you? If you are overly empathic, you just might. It can show up as depression or anxiety, or as a knot in your neck or back, or even as IBS or perhaps autoimmune issues. Admit that as a physician, you have seen people think themselves into diagnosable conditions.

Instead, why not practice compassion? See the pain and devastation and let it arouse sensations in you, and just like with other emotions and feelings, don’t judge or repress them, just let them pass. Compassion is the ability to live in someone else’s shoes and not let the negative (and not infrequent, necessary) emotions cling to your mind or soul. Yes, we have a hard job sometimes, but it is not our responsibility to keep that pain. It is our responsibility to let others feel what they have to (even pain) and move through it as best they can.

So, the difference between compassion and empathy?

 

Compassion vs. Empathy

Empathy might be defined as the ability to experience the thoughts, feelings, and even experiences of others.

As healers, we have seen fellow physicians who are too empathetic and enmesh themselves in the lives of their patients, colleagues, and loved ones. On the other extreme, we see folks who can no longer feel empathy and continuously seek temporary (and harmful) relief through numbing (not infrequently via overworking and being ”busy”).

With compassion rather than empathy, you understand that it is ok as a healer to focus on your inner purpose in life and cultivate joy and a sense of adventure rather than concentrate others’ suffering in your own mind and body. You can still sit with them in their suffering and help them through it without making the suffering yours. It is not your job to have long-term negative mental and physical effects as a result of the fact that you are a good person and healer and often deal with truly difficult situations.

Instead, with compassion, you understand that to live courageously with your whole heart and self-authenticity, you can channel unconditional love. Yes, I’m getting a bit wu-wu here, but it is possible to love people through hard times. And, as a compassionate healer, it is just what you naturally do! Admit that you feel unconditional love for your patients during their hard times. Accept that it is hard for them, and it is hard for you, too.

But since compassion comes from love, it is ok for you to feel joy, be open-hearted, and be connected during and after the shattering event. It is healthy for you to emote joy and love rather than pain and sorrow as you move on to your next moment.

You can choose empathy and responsibility to pain or compassion and responsibility to love.

 

The Health Benefits of Compassion

So, what are the health benefits of compassion? Some benefits have more data than others, but compassion decreases depression and anxiety, decreases burnout, alleviates self-doubt and self-judgment, increases positive attitudes and kindness, decreases stress, improves the immune system, decreases blood pressure (while reducing cortisol and increasing oxytocin),  reduces the length of stay after major surgery (yes it saves money postoperatively!), decrease chronic pain, and finally, improves outcomes in end-of-life care. For an extensive review of the health and psychological benefits, go here.

 

Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is just as or more important than compassion for others. The benefits and reasons for self-compassion are the same. Kristen Neff has a great website with lots of resources and you can take a test to see how self-compassionate you are.

She breaks down self-compassion into:

Self-Kindness

Let go of self-criticism, and be kind to yourself.

Common Humanity

Just like everybody poops (an important lesson for children to learn), everybody suffers (an important lesson for adults to learn). You are not alone in suffering.

Mindfulness

Not just being non-reactive but also not over-identifying with negative feelings.

 

How Can You Cultivate Compassion in Your Life?

Cultivating an altruistic attitude is a worthy and achievable goal. It is an inner-directed goal, something that you have the infinite capacity to increase, and not a world-directed goal that ultimately is hollow.

As mentioned, not only can compassion improve your physical and mental health, but it also increases your sense of belonging and, ultimately, inner peace. You suffer less and accept your life and the world around you when you practice compassion.

Cultivating compassion can be done through personal experiences, exercises in common sense, and reviewing the scientific literature.

Of course, compassion can be challenging because it evokes fear. Fear of pain or fear of loss. How can you deal with these fears? Stay with the emotional distress and let it soften inside of you rather than harden into fear.

 

Compassion, however, is more emotionally challenging than loving-kindness because it involves the willingness to feel pain. ~Pema Chodron

 

Have the courage to open up to suffering—yours and others—and face reality with the compassion that it deserves. It is healthy to do so.

And remember that compassion is felt between equals, not between a healer and the wounded. Recognized the shared humanity in the commonality of human life on this earth.

For Brene Brown, practicing compassion is letting go of perfectionism. Self-compassion means embracing imperfections and practicing authenticity. You let go of judgment and criticisms and instead realize that sometimes, showing up is enough.

 

The Opposite of Compassion

On the flip side of compassion are aggression and anger. These are the wrong emotions to use when guiding your life. Biochemically, anger shunts blood away from your neocortex, leaving you unable to make rational decisions. When you are angry, you do not see reality; instead, you project your version of reality on everything around you. You are apt to see your undiscovered pain and personal flaws in the world around you when you are angry, and even more importantly, you project that pain and those flaws onto other people instead of taking them on as your own.

If a conflict or disagreement is important to you, do not approach it with anger. If you do, you hamstring your own logic and wellness (remember, this is a physiological truth based upon lack of blood flow to your logic and reasoning parts of the brain). Instead, approach conflict by cultivating compassion and understanding.

 

Summary – The Health Benefits of Compassion

As a physician, it is not your responsibility to feel other people’s pain or to fix their suffering for them. Carrying other people’s pain prevents you from being a healer. Enabling their suffering prevents you from being a guide, or an assistant, as they move into higher, less painful states of mind.

It is hard enough to practice medicine without practicing self-immolation, which is what empathy brings. Instead, cultivate compassion in your daily difficult interactions. Compassion helps us understand the roots of suffering.

There are proven health benefits of compassion. You can be joyful and content while shepherding yourself and others through our (often broken) healthcare system.

Seek your inner purpose and let external goals and success fade away. Understand you are enough just the way you are; you are a good healer and a good person, and you know what is yours and what is not yours. Love, compassion, joy, and belonging are yours if you want them, even though medical school, residency, and EMRs irresponsibly suck away your inner light and sense of wellness.

Take a stand today and practice compassion. It is good for you.

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