What I Should Have Said

This is a response to my own post, because the unfortunate way I worded some of the points has led to a regrettable misunderstanding of what I intended to communicate. I apologize for that and for the distress it has caused; the post should have been written and edited with more care.

My awkward and inadequate explanations led some people to believe that I was against validation and empathy. That I gave the latter impression is particularly disturbing. I started CompassionPower nearly 30 years ago as a program to train violent offenders to use self-compassion and compassion for others as an incompatible response to aggressive impulses. Over the years the program expanded to apply the same strategy to the precursors and predictors of violence, aggression, and abuse, namely entitlement and resentment.

I believe that my own research - and the more rigorous research of many others - has shown the necessity of compassion in family relationships. I have made the case many times in this blog and in all of my books and most of my articles that compassion is the most important emotion in relationships, much more important than love. Family relationships can thrive with low love, as long as compassion is high. But love without compassion is possessive, controlling, and dangerous. Compassion is the lifeblood of relationships.

The offending post was not about relationships, although it used relationships with no lifeblood, i.e., no compassion, as an example of suffering. It was the second of a two-part post about how we misunderstand the benefits of pain as a signal to heal, repair, and improve, and how, when that signal is ignored, pain generalizes over time into suffering.

Pain is an action-signal, a crucial part of the mammalian motivational system that keeps us safe and well. It tells us to do something, but not what. What to do - beyond fight or flight - must come from the prefrontal cortex, after it processes the signal of pain.

The pain/alarm system, like most components of biological systems, is somewhat trial and error. It gets you to do something, and if the pain gets better and doesn't come back, then you probably did the right thing. If the pain gets worse or ameliorates for a while but keeps coming back, then it's telling you to try something else.

What I should have done in the first of the two-part post (would have done if it were about relationships) was use an example of pain telling you to be more self-compassionate - care about your pain with a motivation to make it better - and one of the things that could make it better is to ask for compassion and validation from those you love. (If the relationship is truly healthy i.e., nurturing the growth and development of both parties, you shouldn't have to ask, but that is not the point here.)

Seeking validation is one way to heal, repair and improve, but only if you get it. (You are far more likely to get it if you give it, but with some people, no matter how much you give, they simply cannot give back, without therapeutic intervention.) '

Everyone deserves compassion and validation, and it's natural to seek them from others, especially loved ones. The point I wanted to make in the second of the two-part post is that once people convince themselves that they cannot heal or be whole unless a certain person validates them, they tragically underestimate their own value and their enormous power to heal, improve, learn, repair, and create value in their lives.

We want validation, we insist on it from those with whom we have close relationships because it can enrich our lives, but we do not need it to heal, improve, and repair. It is an unforgivable failure of compassion to suggest to people in pain that they cannot feel valuable, whole, and well, unless someone validates them, especially someone who has hurt them.

Finally, some readers felt that I was "blaming the victim," in the post. I deeply regret giving that impression. As a young child, I experienced repeated episodes of severe child abuse. Worse, while barely out of diapers, I had to witness my mother beaten on many occasions by my drunken father. That experience has driven me to do research and to work clinically with thousands of victims and abusers and to dedicate all my books on the subject to my mother. The last thing I want to do is blame someone for being hurt by loved ones. I was seeking, somewhat clumsily, to empower, to reassure those who suffer that they have the capacity to heal, repair, and create value in their lives, and to encourage them to recognize when their partners do not or cannot value and sympathize with them, that they must leave the burning building, because that is what their pain-alarm is telling them to do.