The Compassion Chronicles

The Expectation that Women Be Compassionate

Beverly Engel, L.M.F.T. — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:05:10 +0000

The fact is that women in most countries are expected to be compassionate, nurturing, and to put their own needs aside on a regular basis. In most Third World countries, a woman's primary job is considered to be homemaker and mother. Few ever have the opportunity to pursue an interest, much less a job or career. If a woman is not compassionate, she is considered a bad woman. Even in more modern societies like Japan, women are still supposed to make their husband and children the primary focus of their life. For this reason, many Japanese women are deliberately delaying getting married, since they know that once they do so they will be expected to stop their career and make homemaking their major occupation. The same is true in many Middle Eastern countries and in India.

The problem with this is, while women are hard-wired to be compassionate, nurturing and patient in order for them to be good mothers, not every woman has an abundance of these qualities. For example, if a woman did not have a nurturing mother herself, she may end up being so wounded that she lacks the capacity to put her own needs aside for someone else. Unfortunately, these women are usually pressured into becoming wives and mothers whether they want to or not. Thus, the cycle continues and we see these women becoming like their own mothers--emotionally neglecting their children and worse yet, abusing their children.

In my practice I have worked with many Middle Eastern and Indian women whose own mothers were pressured into getting married. Far from being compassionate, they describe their mothers are harsh, critical and impatient. Sensing that they may be the same way with their own children, they resist getting married. But they receive so much pressure from their families that they usually give in. They end up not only sacrificing their own lives (many would prefer to have a career) but their future children's lives as well since they find they cannot emotionally connect with their children or that they take their anger and frustration out on their children.

Are Women Too Compassionate for Their Own Good?

Beverly Engel, L.M.F.T. — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:47:10 +0000

ARE WOMEN TOO COMPASSIONATE FOR THEIR OWN GOOD?

Most people consider females to be more compassionate than males. But is this always a good thing? Females are hard-wired to be compassionate and patient and to value connection over confrontation. This is partly because we are biologically programmed to be caretakers. Nature has an investment in women being unselfish when it comes to their children-otherwise, children would be left to their own devices and would starve or go unprotected and be killed. Add to this the fact that women are socialized from early childhood to put other people first and to sacrifice for the people they care about, and we find that it is not uncommon for women to put other people's feelings and needs ahead of their own. But unfortunately, often women are too compassionate for their own good.

Rachel Simmons, the author of the best selling book Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, found that the need to consider others' feelings at the expense of their own was a theme that ran through her interviews with girls. No matter how upset they were, the girls said that they would rather not hurt someone else's feelings. Their own needs seemed utterly expendable. They learned to shrink their problems and feelings into "little things," calling them "unimportant," "stupid," "not worth a fight, " and to stow them away somewhere inside.

Unfortunately, putting other people's feelings and needs ahead of our own can create a situation where a woman can actually become unaware of or numb to her own feelings and needs. Once this occurs a woman is a prime candidate to be used or abused by others without her even realizing it. And she is so focused outside of herself and so cut off from her own needs that in essence, she neglects and abuses herself.

Even the most liberated and powerful women can fall into the trap of putting others needs and feelings first. In Revolution from Within Gloria Steinem wrote about her own experience of being what she called "empathy sick," meaning that she had focused so much of her time and attention on helping others and meeting their needs that she had lost touch with herself and her own needs. She had spent so much time relating to others that she knew other people's feelings better than her own.

In my book, Loving Him without Losing You I wrote about my own experience with empathy sickness. About fifteen years ago I became burned out physically, emotionally and spiritually from spending all my time and energy helping clients and pouring my soul into one relationship after another. Both my physical and emotional health was suffering and I had lost touch with my own needs.

This is a typical scenario for many women-not just those who are committed to social change and the betterment of others. Women tend to focus so much attention on caring for others, on being empathetic to the needs of others, that we get lost in the process.

Quieting Your Inner Critic Through Self-Compassion

Beverly Engel, L.M.F.T. — Sat, 24 May 2008 03:29:52 +0000

If you are like many people you constantly judge yourself harshly and set unreasonable expectations for yourself. You may have a nagging inner voice who is constantly harassing you for something you did or did not do. My client Connie shared with me about how self-critical she is. "I'm an educated woman but I feel so incompetent and stupid most of the time. I constantly compare myself with other people and always end up feeling inferior in some way. I'm amazed at how other people seem to be able to speak up and not worry about whether what they say is going to be negatively judged by others, because I'm afraid I'll say something that will let other people know just how incompetent I really am."

Everyone has a critical inner voice, but some have a more vicious and vocal inner critic. A loud, verbose inner critic is enormously poisonous to your psychological health-more so, in fact, than any deprivation or trauma you may have experienced. We can often heal our wounds and recover from our losses, but the critic is always with us, judging us, blaming us, finding fault in us.

One of the most powerful ways to quiet our inner critic is through self-compassion. As Byron Brown, the author of Soul without Shame, so eloquently put it: "Compassion is the greatest antidote to the poison of your pathological inner critic." When you are being compassionate toward yourself, you essentially gag your pathological inner critic.

Compassion is the essence of self-esteem. When you have compassion for yourself, you understand and accept yourself the way you are. You tend to see yourself as basically good. If you make a mistake, you forgive yourself. You have reasonable expectations of yourself. You set attainable goals.

Compassion is a skill. That means that you can improve it if you already have it, or you can acquire it if you don't. The next time you hear your inner critic chastising you about something you did or did not do, counter this negativity by telling yourself something like, " I'm doing the best I can." Or "Given my circumstances, this is all I am capable of at this time." Give it a try, you'll be amazed at how much it helps.

What Is Compassion and How Can It Improve My Life?

Beverly Engel, L.M.F.T. — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:18:11 +0000

The definition of compassion is the ability to understand the emotional state of another person or oneself. Often confused with empathy, compassion has the added element of having a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another. Empathy, as most people know, is the ability to put oneself in the other person's place. Although compassion and empathy are two separate things, having compassion for someone can lead to feeling empathy for another person.

Although the above is the accepted definition of compassion, I believe that having compassion for someone involves more than putting yourself in their place and genuinely wanting to understand or even help them. It involves beginning to have a totally different perspective when it comes to how you perceive others. For example, instead of assuming that the reason someone has done something that hurts you is because they are selfish or inconsiderate, assume instead that they had a good reason for doing it. This idea, based on Marshall Rosenberg's philosophy, can be difficult to buy into at first. But when you think about it, don't you usually have a good reason when you do something, even if what you did may seem inconsiderate to someone else? Let's say you are very worried about your child's health. You took her to the doctor and he decided to take tests in order to rule out a serious disease. Later that day you are walking down the street, preoccupied with your daughter and an acquaintance passes you and says hello. You say hello in return but because you are so deep in thought you don't stop to chat. Later on you hear the acquaintance felt insulted because you "snubbed" her. Even though it was not your intention to snub this person, and you had a very good reason for your behavior-the acquaintance assumed the worst. Unfortunately, this is what most of us do. We assume the worst. Learning to have more compassion involves making the radical shift to assume the best in others. If the acquaintance had assumed the best, she would have concluded that it wasn't personal-that you must have been preoccupied-and she would have been right!

To Forgive or Not Forgive: That is the Question

Beverly Engel, L.M.F.T. — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:33:57 +0000

Many people believe that forgiveness is necessary if we are to put the past behind us and move on. Twelve-step programs teach the philosophy that we should forgive others because they, like us, were doing the best they could at the time. Many religions teach that forgiveness is the only fair and compassionate thing to do, since we have all sinned and we have all hurt others. Many psychotherapists also believe that forgiveness is necessary in order to heal. But as wise as spiritual leaders and therapists are concerning the importance of forgiveness, sometimes forgiveness is not possible. Unfortunately, we have not been given permission to choose not to forgive. It is my belief that forgiveness is not necessary for healing, and in some cases may not be the healthiest thing to do. This is especially true when forgiving is tantamount to giving permission to hurt you again.

Sometimes we need to hold onto the very thing that prevents us from forgiving in order to cope and survive--anger. Anger can be a powerful motivator, especially for those who have been victimized. Anger can help us rise above the victimization and to fight our way back from the most devastating of traumas. For example, research shows that female victims of rape who allowed themselves to express their rage about being raped were able to recover from the trauma much better than those who never got angry. It is often anger that motivates a victim to continue facing the pain.

In the case of child sexual abuse, it is often anger that helps victims feel separate from their abuser (victims of incest, in particular, often feel too enmeshed with their abuser) since anger separates us from others. Victims also need their anger in order to ward off feelings of shame and guilt (victims of all forms of abuse, especially sexual abuse, tend to blame themselves for their own victimization).

Hopefully, there will come a time when a victim no longer needs her anger. When this happens she or he will be more able to look at forgiveness as a viable option. But each person needs to come to this point on his or her own and not be pressured to forgive because it is the "politically correct" thing to do.

I'd like to hear your thoughts and feelings on this sometimes touchy subject. Do you think it is always possible to forgive? Do you think it is necessary for healing? What is the offender never admits that he or she did anything wrong, do we still need to forgive?