Relationships
Overcoming Barriers to Compassion
We all have them, and we all suffer the consequences.
Posted June 27, 2023 Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
Key points
- Most of what we fight about in love relationships is failure of compassion.
- Blame, denial, and avoidance can block compassion in close relationships.
- Compassionate behavior can revitalize dormant feelings of compassion.
Relationships seem to end in a whimper, not a bang. The final rupture is less from abuse or infidelity than too little compassion.
Compassion is sympathy for the hurt, distress, or hardship of another, with motivation to help. It's not just feeling sorry for someone; it includes an impulse to help or comfort. At heart it's simple appreciation of the basic human frailty we all share. That's why giving compassion makes us feel more humane and less isolated.
Compassion is necessary for the formation of emotional bonds. Think of when you were dating someone you eventually came to love. Suppose you had to call that person and report that your parents had died. If your date responded with, "Well, that's tough, call me when you get over it," would you have fallen in love with that person? Chances are, you fell in love with someone whom you believed cared about how you felt, especially when you felt bad.
Most of what people fight about is not money or sex or in-laws or raising the kids. Those are common problems that seem insurmountable only when they’re hurt. What causes the hurt, that is, what they really fight about, is the impression that their partners don’t care how they feel. When loved ones are not compassionate, it feels like abuse.
The advantages of compassion are just about as good as it gets in human endeavor. When compassionate, you:
- Like yourself better
- Have more options for behavior choice
- Usually get a positive response
- Usually improve matters.
So why don’t we do more of it?
Compassion Blocks
The most common blocks to compassion in close relationships are coping mechanisms of blame, denial, and avoidance, usually in response to the possibility of experiencing guilt, shame, or fear. Guilt, shame, and fear tend to be invisible in close relationships; we see only coping defenses.
Blame produces anger or resentment. Denial is visible as defensiveness or deflection or counteraccusation. Avoidance looks like distraction, disinterest, or emotional shut-down.
When habits of blame, denial, and avoidance are entrenched, it’s difficult to experience the vulnerable emotions, even briefly. Tolerance deteriorates to the point where the specter of vulnerability seems to augur an abyss of suffering.
The disadvantages of blocking compassion are evident. Compassion blocks:
- Make it hard to like yourself
- Greatly limit behavior choices
- Almost always get a negative response
- Always make things worse, at least in the long run.
The Way Out
On a motivational level, the connection of compassion with guilt, shame, fear, and sadness has survival significance. They evolved in the human brain at a time when to leave emotionally bonded relationships would mean almost certain death by starvation or sabretooth tiger. (That’s why it can feel like you might die when dumped by a lover.) But the connection holds only when the vulnerable emotions are experienced, at least briefly, rather than blamed, denied, or avoided.
For example, guilt occurs when we’ve done something that harmed or threatened attachment bonds. When experienced, guilt motivates recompense and reconnection. Shame results from severance of attachment bonds. When experienced, it motivates reconciliation and reconnection. Fear, when experienced, motivates safety-seeking through reconnection. Sadness (felt loss), when experienced, is ameliorated by gaining reconnection. In each case, the intermediate sense between vulnerable emotions of disconnection and the comfort and safety of connection is compassion.
Perspective-Taking
Perspective-taking is a deep understanding of what a person is thinking, perceiving, and feeling. It requires determined effort because, on autopilot, the brain projects thoughts and perceptions onto others, particularly in close relationships embedded in routine. Perspective-taking requires suppression of reactivity to the surface level of another’s negative feelings.
Negative feelings are multi-layered. The top layer — what we normally react to — is the defensive/symptom level, typically anger, resentment, or presumption of superiority. These are defensive reactions to avoid vulnerability, usually guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, sadness. While we can’t feel compassion for the defenses against vulnerability, we can (and must in close relationships) have compassion for the vulnerability that gives rise to the defenses.
For example, when my wife yells at me, I know that she’s hurt. When I’m compassionate to her hurt, the anger dissipates. Another way to put it is, vulnerable emotions are the fuel, anger is the flame. Fanning the flame will burn your hand. Turning off the gas puts out the fire.
Feeling Compassion vs. Behaving Compassionately
The experience of compassion is metabolically expensive. It consumes a lot of cognitive and emotional resources, which are not always available on demand. Some people are better at feeling compassion than others. But everyone can behave compassionately (help) without necessarily feeling compassion. I personally believe that the experience of compassion follows compassionate behavior more often than the other way around. Furthermore, the expense of compassion is mitigated when we behave routinely with kindness and appreciation in close relationships. This prevents a great deal of the hurt that makes compassion necessary and renders compassion available when it is needed.
