What Do You Know About Common Humanity?

I first learned about common humanity from a book on self-compassion. Common humanity is, in a simple sense, recognizing our belonging to a whole and that we all share in suffering and joy. I thought to myself, "What does that have to do with ourselves?" The answer? Everything in the world.

Self-Compassion and Common Humanity

Often, we focus on what makes us unique. Self-esteem is often based on comparisons and a need to be better than one another. Still, comparisons can also ruin our sense of kindness to ourselves. Self-compassion reaches deeper than self-esteem to award loyalty to ourselves from the get-go. Rather than a need to prove ourselves better than others, self-compassion does not need to be earned. It hinges on the sacred reality we share as humans and the value of our existence.

Dr. Kristen Neff, a psychologist who has extensively researched self-compassion, defines it as having three main parts: mindfulness (being in the present), self-kindness, and common humanity (Neff, 2011). Common humanity focuses beyond our relationship with ourselves to our relationships with others and the world. It's about realizing how much we share as fellow humans.

If we broaden our compassion for others, we can extend that compassion to include ourselves.

It's based on fact. We have much in common, and no matter how much we achieve, none of us is invincible.

Even doctors die. Spiritual leaders of all kinds question their faith. Therapists have their life problems. Police break the law. Teachers still have plenty to learn (as we all do). And I believe that, at some point, almost every person on earth feels like they don't belong.

We need each other.

Pop Psychology and Individualism

Popular psychology has often been fixated on individuals with ideas about building stronger boundaries, narcissism, and recognizing ways people might manipulate or gaslight us. All of these can be helpful at specific times and in certain ways. Yet, we hear less often about constructs like common humanity that focus on our basic "good" and what we share rather than what keeps us apart.

Pop psychology has a natural bias toward individualism. Yet, a major piece of our identity and sense of welfare is rooted in our relationships.

Common humanity is one notion that may serve to strengthen ties and understanding, which, in turn, helps the individuals involved. One study of senior citizens found that among the 209 participants, a strong sense of common humanity predicted well-being (Imtiaz, 2017). Further, a beautiful aspect of common humanity is that it can be cultivated. Another study showed that health care workers relayed a higher level of compassion after a video-led task designed to build common humanity (Ling et al., 2021).

How to Build Common Humanity

There is a simple activity for building common humanity that is outlined in the workbook, "Self-Compassion for Teens: 129 Activities and Practices to Cultivate Kindness" (Gray, 2017). It goes like this. You think of something you are struggling with and then add the words "like me, others are struggling with fill-in-the-blank.

So, for example, you might think, "Like me, others are struggling with conflict" or "Like me, others are struggling with pain."

A turn on this can be focusing on something positive in your life and adding "like me." So, maybe you might think, "Like me, others are looking forward to the new year."

It's a simple strategy but not an easy one. As quickly as we can reach out to include others, we can contract ourselves into our circular bubbles, feeding into isolation and a sense that no one can truly understand us. But this is not true.

Closing

Common humanity is a term worth learning and a practice worth growing.