Everyday we make choices—from the most mundane to possibly life changing. While some decisions are easier to make than others, some require that we take time and consider all of our options. When things don’t turn out the way we want them, we sometimes get this sinking feeling when thinking of what we could’ve done differently or the opportunity that may have been lost because of our decision. When things don’t go as we expected we may feel disappointed and even regret.
While regret and disappointment at times can look the same, we experience them differently. Regret is this feeling of “I should’ve known better”. It makes us think of what we could’ve done to prevent the outcome. Disappointment is when the outcome is less favorable than what we had originally thought.
Unlike regret, disappointment is a more general emotion as we can still feel disappointed of outcomes that are outside of our control. To give an example:
Disappointment: I was disappointed when the film I wanted to see didn’t live up to my expectations. Regret: I regret spending so much money on meaningless things.
With regret, we are focused on our role in the decision making process whereas in disappointment we can feel disappointed in the outcome regardless of our role in the situation. Feelings of regret and disappointment can be overwhelming. The following are some ways that we can do to handle these emotions:
1. Acknowledge that you are feeling these emotions.
Think of your emotions as a compass to how you feel in a given situation. Regret and disappointment are uncomfortable emotions, but they are not bad. It’s easy for us to get stuck in our head thinking of what could’ve been or just ignore these emotions altogether. But, ignoring these emotions can make us feel lost and it leaves us not knowing what to do next.
In contrast, acknowledging our emotions can give us a clearer picture of the situation. As uncomfortable as it may be, it’s our body communicating to us how we feel at that moment. By acknowledging these emotions without judgment, we allow ourselves to view things more objectively. Not only will it help us in the decision making process, but it also gives information on what we can do when we are faced with a similar situation.
2. Forgive yourself for your decisions when things don’t go as expected.
We make choices based on what we know at a given time. Nobody is perfect — we make mistakes, we fall, we have shortcomings. It may be difficult to forgive yourself when things don’t turn out as you expected, but just as you had a choice in the past, you can still make better choices moving forward.
3. Apologize to other people who may be affected.
Sometimes the consequences of our decisions not only affect us, but it also affects other people. Making amends with other people can be difficult at times, but we can start with acknowledging that we have caused pain to someone because of our actions, and letting them know that we feel remorse about what happened.
4. Take it as an opportunity to learn
It’s easy to fall into the “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve’s” knowing what we know now. Instead of ruminating on what we could’ve done differently, we can use the knowledge that we know now and make different choices when we are faced with a similar situation in the future.
It’s a daunting realization to have that in every decision we make, we somehow let go of all the other possibilities that may happen. It’s even more daunting when we think about what could’ve happened if we chose differently — especially when the outcome isn’t what we wanted. Our reality may be different than what we had hoped but we can make better choices moving forward.
References:
Cherry, K. (2022, February 14). How to cope with regret. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-regret-5218665
Neff, K. (2015, February 21). Embracing our common humanity with self-compassion. Self-Compassion. https://self-compassion.org/embracing-our-common-humanit y-with-self-compassion/
What self-compassion is not: Self-esteem, self-pity, indulgence. (2021, July 26). Self-Compassion. https://self-compassion.org/what-self-compassion-is-not-2/
Roese, N. J., & Vohs, K. D. (2012). Hindsight bias. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 411-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612454303
Zeelenberg, M., van Dijk, W. W., S.R.Manstead, A., & Der Pligt, J. (1998). The experience of regret and disappointment. Cognition and Emotion, 12(2), 221-230.https://doi.org/10.1080/026999398379727
Have you ever heard of the statement “That’s what friends are for”? It implies the role of a friend as someone you can count on to help you out. So when a friend reaches out and opens up about a problem, it seems natural to listen, comfort, and support them as best as you can. But there are times when you may not feel confident enough to help them. You may feel like you don’t understand the problem very well because you have not experienced it, or you have probably dealt with a similar problem before but could not understand why your friend is struggling with it. Sometimes, the idea of saying something wrong and making things worse for your friend is daunting in and of itself. Fortunately, there is one way for you to help your friend in times of mental distress.
So how can I help my friend out?
Like with medical concerns, you can provide first aid for mental health concerns.
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is done to help someone experiencing a mental health crisis when professional help is not yet available. ALGEE is a tool that is used to provide MHFA. It won’t teach you how to become your friend’s personal therapist, but it will help you provide them with the support they need to cope with what they are going through in that moment of crisis.
ALGEE is an acronym that stands for the following: Assess for risks of suicide or harm; Listen without judgment; Give reassurance and information; Encourage appropriate professional help; and Encourage self-help and other support strategies.
How do you use ALGEE?
ALGEE can be done in any order, depending on what you think your friend needs at the moment. Below is an overview of how you can approach and what you can expect to happen in each step.
1. ASSESS for risk of suicide and harm
This step involves observing for any signs that would tell that a person is in distress. Such signs can be a sudden change in behavior or an unusual reaction to a particular topic or situation. You should also be alert to mentions or jokes of your friend contemplating suicide, as well as self-harm behaviors such as cutting, engaging in excessive substance use (such as alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs), or doing risky activities that can harm them physically.
If you find out that your friend is actively hurting themself or has plans to commit suicide, then it is important to persuade them to get help as soon as possible.
2. LISTEN without judgment
People who are in distress want to be heard. That’s why it is important to give them the opportunity to say what they want to say uninterrupted. Keep an open mind about what they are saying, even when you do not agree with them. Avoid making speculations or giving advice, unless your friend specifically asks for your opinion on the matter.
Show that you are actively listening by keeping an open and receptive body posture (that is, arms and legs uncrossed and palms resting comfortably on the lap or desk) and maintaining eye contact. You can also make appropriate verbal responses to show that you understand and follow what they are saying. Responses may be in the form of reinforcements (“I see.” or “Uh-huh.”), acknowledgements (“That’s tough.” or “I can imagine how confusing it is to be in that situation.”), questions (“What did you do to cope with that situation?”), and reflections (“This is what I heard from you. Am I understanding it correctly?”). If you’re talking with your friend through text or chat, you may need to rely more on verbal responses to better understand each other.
3. GIVE reassurance and information
In an effort to cheer your friend, you may sometimes find yourself telling them that everything will be okay or that they can do things if they only believe in themselves. However, people in distress may feel so overwhelmed and hopeless that they cannot see their situation improving or believe that they can act on their problems. To give reassurance, you need to make them see the possibility. You can do this by providing evidence and information. Are there ways to deal with their problem that they may not have thought of? Have there been situations that contradict a negative thought that’s been running through their mind? Helping them find evidence that there are things that can be done is an effective way of instilling hope in them.
There may be times when your friend thinks that undesired feelings or behaviors, such as lashing out at other people or being too afraid to speak in public, are their fault. However, such feelings or behaviors may actually be symptoms of a particular mental illness or of significant distress that could lead to a mental illness if untreated. Thus, it is important to emphasize that mental illness is real and the symptoms they are experiencing can be treated with the right help.
4. ENCOURAGE appropriate professional help
The earlier your friend gets help, the more likely they can recover. Find out what kind of support your friend needs at the moment and help them find professionals, agencies, organizations, or institutions that can make things a little easier for them.
If they need psychological help, there are various mental health services and programs available. Some universities and organizations offer free therapy sessions, although they may be limited in terms of slots or the number of sessions that can be availed. For long-term and more intensive help, paid therapy sessions in clinics and hospitals may be necessary. You can check out the directory of mental health facilities in the country created by #MentalHealthPH here. Additionally, 24/7 crisis lines come in handy whenever there is a need to overcome a mental crisis or to prevent a suicide attempt. A list of these hotlines can be found here. Regardless of whether payment is involved, simply being able to attend therapy is already a huge step towards healing.
5. ENCOURAGE self-help and other support strategies
Mental health services aren’t always available, and this can be a problem when your friend experiences a panic attack or suddenly feels overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts. Knowing how to deal with these emergencies helps them develop the skills to cope with crises on their own. Coping strategies such as breathing, grounding, and self-soothing techniques are useful during panic attacks. Utilizing tools for mindfulness and emotion regulation also helps practice control and lessen chaotic situations caused by outbursts. Exercising, spending time with friends and families, and engaging in hobbies and other recreational activities can help improve one’s quality of life. For some mindfulness breathing exercises, you can check out Circle of Hope’s Hingalangin videos on their Facebook page.
To see a demonstration of ALGEE, you can watch this roleplay video on YouTube.
Are there things I should consider when using ALGEE?
As a mental health first aid tool, the main purpose of ALGEE is not to diagnose your friend or solve their problem, but to help determine their needs and provide appropriate support. While your closeness can help your friend be more comfortable opening up to you, it is important to always be objective, express empathy, and abide by the principle of “Do no harm.”
Here are ways that you can do this.
Keep what is said confidential, unless help from other people is necessary.
It takes courage for a person to open up about their struggles. Some people refuse to share what they are going through for fear of exposing themselves to the wrong people. Reaching out to you means that they trust you to keep what they have said only to yourself. Before going through ALGEE, it is best to set up a time and a place to talk to your friend privately. This will give your friend a chance to be vulnerable in a safe space. However, keep in mind that if there is a high risk that your friend would commit suicide, ensuring their safety by asking for help from other people and authorities is necessary.
Do not force your friend to share their problems with you.
Sometimes, people are just not ready to talk about their problems. If your friend outright tells you that they do not want to talk, do not force them to. Instead, encourage them to talk to someone that they trust or assure them that you are available to listen to them whenever they are ready. You can also simply ask them what they need at the moment. Show them that there is someone who is willing to listen and help, and they have the option to choose who or when they seek help.
Refrain from invalidating them or trivializing what your friend is going through.
Some people keep their worries to themselves because they believe that no one would hear them out or make the effort to understand them. When your friend opens up to you, listen well and try to see the situation from their perspective. If there are things they said that you do not agree with, do not reject or dismiss what they are feeling or thinking about. If you think that their problems are too simple, remember that every person is affected by situations differently. What may be easy for you may be too much for them. Likewise, if you have experienced a similar problem and have resolved it successfully, take note that what may have worked for you may not work for them. Thus, when providing help and support, consider their strengths and weaknesses.
Give your friend the control that they need through options.
One of the reasons why people usually feel distressed is because they feel that they cannot control their situation. Thus, if solutions are imposed on them, the feeling of having a lack of control will increase. If you have a solution in mind, ask first if they are open to hear advice. If they are, assure them that your advice is simply a suggestion and is open to modifications until they find one that they are comfortable with.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
There are times when it can’t be helped to expect something from your friend or from the situation. However, it is important to be open to the possibility that things may not go your way. Something may keep your friend from getting help despite your agreement or keep the situation from improving as you both hope. Identify the challenges, seek alternatives, and try again. And remember, it’s okay to make mistakes!
Watch out and prepare yourself for compassion fatigue.
While being there for a friend during their toughest times is admirable, there are times when their problems, emotions, and negative thoughts can get to you too. When you feel overwhelmed with helping your friend or are starting to feel affected by what they’re going through, you may be experiencing compassion fatigue. It is important to be mindful of the symptoms of compassion fatigue and to prepare yourself to prevent it or address it when it comes. Remember to take a break if you have to and to take care of yourself first every once in a while. It’s also important to not be too hard on yourself if things don’t go as well as you hope. If your friend deserves compassion, then don’t you deserve some as well? You can practice some self-compassion exercises to help you combat compassion fatigue.
Using ALGEE is a great way to create a mental checklist of what you can do to help out a friend during a mental crisis. However, this does not mean that you have to strictly abide by it or be overly concerned if you skip a step. The most important thing about helping a friend is being there for them and showing them that you care.
References:
Altta Wellbeing. (2019, September 30). ALGEE – 5 letters, 1 life saved every time. https://wellbeing.altta.co.uk/algee/
Jorm, A. (2016). Key Elements of Mental Health First Aid. Alan J Fisher Centre for Public Mental Health. http://cpmh.org.za/wmhd/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Key-Elements.pdf
Martinelli, K. (2023, February 20). How to Support a Friend With Mental Health Challenges. Child Mind Institute. https://childmind.org/article/support-friend-with-mental-health-challenges/
Mental Health Foundation. (n.d.). How to support someone with a mental health problem. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/articles/how-support-someone-mental-health-problem
Thurrott, S. (2021, June 11). Watch for These Key Warning Signs of Compassion Fatigue. Banner Health. https://www.bannerhealth.com/healthcareblog/teach-me/watch-for-these-key-warning-signs-of-compassion-fatigue
“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible.
Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
Tara Brach
As we faced frightening and stressful times during the pandemic many of us became familiar with the vocabulary of fight, flight, and freeze responses to stress and trauma. When a threatening situation arises, our nervous system sets off an automatic response toward safety and protection. This process happens unconsciously, without us having to think or be intentional about it, with the goal of survival being the immediate priority. The brain prepares the body to deal with the threat in different ways: to engage with it aggressively (fight), to run away or avoid it (flight), or to shut-down and numb the pain if the danger is deemed to be insurmountable (freeze). In our modern world, these stress reactions are mostly triggered by emotional or social threats such as our fear of failure, loss of control, rejection, abandonment, and feelings of worthlessness. Although useful and necessary for coping with real danger, being chronically caught in the habit of these defensive responses severely compromises our physical and mental health.
The fawn response is a lesser known stress and trauma response mechanism that deserves much more attention than it gets. Natureza Gabriel Kram, in his book Restorative Practices of Wellbeing (2021), describes the fawn response as a survival structure that utilizes our capacity for connection to disarm a threat. It usually emerges in contexts where the source of danger is someone we are intimately connected with. In these circumstances fighting, fleeing, or freezing would not have achieved our adaptive goals either because the threatening figure is someone we depend on for our survival or that using a more overt defensive response would have worsened the potential harm. A lot of times the fawn response gets reinforced early in life as a way of coping with emotionally unavailable, critical, or abusive caregiving. In the absence of supportive and empowering connections, young children may become hyper-focused on pleasing parents and caregivers by being sensitive to their distress and taking care of their emotional needs.
Dr. Arielle Schwartz characterizes the fawn response as a pattern of pleasing and appeasing behaviors aimed at taking care of the needs of the aggressor in order to diffuse danger. It’s a rather sophisticated process that taps into the social engagement system, manifesting in different forms of accommodation that serve to befriend an aggressor in order to ensure one’s safety. In a broader sense, we could be dealing not only with physical aggression but as is often the case, our safety could be undermined by emotional threats—being harshly criticized or put down, shamed, rejected, and dismissed. The fawn response gets activated to manage these threats. Fawning behaviors commonly manifest as being overly agreeable or helpful; never being able to say no; constantly prioritizing the needs and happiness of the other over one’s own; and forfeiting one’s boundaries, rights, and needs to avoid being attacked or shamed. Perhaps not surprisingly, the fawn response has been observed to be more common in women than in men. Evolutionarily, women have had to defend themselves against male aggressors. However, fighting, escaping, or shutting down might not have been viable responses because they had children to protect and care for. Therefore, it became a matter of necessity for women to engage in a survival strategy that disarms aggressive and controlling male figures by turning toward them and by being over-accommodating to their needs.
As we can see, the fawn response can become a very deeply embedded behavioral pattern which patriarchal societies have culturally entrained.
Pleasing and appeasing behaviors have become implicit expectations in females, preserving the status quo of inequitably distributed power and resources that favor men. The perpetuation of fawning patterns has immense ramifications on women’s lives. Being brought up in families and communities where females are rewarded for fawning has kept our lives smaller than the horizon of opportunities that we deserve.
Psychologically, the consequence of fawning is that it leads us to abandon ourselves. We lose clarity about who we are and disconnect from our truth. Although fawning behaviors may appear functional and even socially desirable from the outside, on the inside what is really going on is a persistent bypassing of our internal signals. While we can project an image of adapting well to external demands, our nervous system is actually in a vulnerable state of threat because we don’t feel safe to be our authentic self. Beneath the surface, we are constantly experiencing stress from the invalidation of our true needs and desires. Women’s physical and mental health are believed to be negatively impacted by the habituation of the fawn response. World-renowned physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté in his book The Myth of Normal (2022) makes the case that women’s acculturation into society to automatically and compulsively prioritize the emotional needs of others while ignoring one’s own is associated with the very high prevalence of autoimmune diseases and non-smoking related cancers among women. It could also help explain why women make up a vast majority of chronic migraine sufferers (Migraine Research Foundation) and take twice as much antidepressants and anxiety pills compared to men. This is not to say that fawning behaviors are biologically determined, but that a patriarchal society thrusts this predicament upon women.
Women’s pathways to wellness need to consider the role that fawn response patterns play in keeping us entrenched in toxic stress cycles. People around us, most of the time those who are close to us, have been accustomed to our dutiful yeses, complying so as not to disrupt the comfort of old ways. Continuing the fight for women’s liberation means challenging ourselves to pull away the curtain that keeps our needs out of sight and daring to listen to our real self. What would happen if we stepped boldly into directing more care and attention to ourselves, to giving voice to our truth, and to saying no to the inequities we experience at home and at work? Where would these acts of self-love take us? Quite simply, they would bring us home.
Unlearning our fawn response is a journey into embracing the freedom that comes from self-authenticity and in recognizing the one treasure that we really are. We are in different circumstances and indeed some women struggle with more severe threats to their safety. Acknowledging the ways we get hooked into fawning is not about self-blame but a compassionate awakening. We can practice and take everyday steps to turn our caring gaze toward ourselves, gradually exploring the new territory of taking action on our behalf and being immensely proud of the courage we’ve found.
Practices in Unlearning our Fawn Response
1. Connecting with our Safety Anchors
Psychotherapist and author Deb Dana espouses a nervous system approach to resilience and wellbeing that emphasizes anchoring on safety. Genuine safety means honoring our internal signals to tell us when are feeling safe or unsafe about different situations. To strengthen our safety ancbors, we are invited to notice WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN we feel safe. Who are the people who make us feel safe? In which relationships do we feel heard and validated? What activities bring us a sense of safety and calm when we’re feeling overwhelmed? Which physical spaces support our feelings of safety and ease? What moments allow us to listen deeply to ourselves?
2. Self-Compassion
Unlike self-criticism which asks if you’re good enough, self-compassion asks what’s good for you? This is according to Dr. Kristin Neff, pioneer researcher on self-compassion. The practice of self-compassion calls for the integration of tenderness and fierceness. We practice the tender side of self-compassion by being with ourselves in an accepting way, comforting and reassuring ourselves, being present to our moments of difficulty without self-judgment. On the other hand, we exercise the fierce side of self-compassion by standing up to protect ourselves, to provide ourselves what we need, and motivate ourselves toward committed action. Sometimes it means saying no, drawing boundaries, and fighting injustice. Speaking our truth can be a form of fierce self-compassion. Dr. Arielle Schwartz suggests exploring incomplete conversations or unfinished business by journaling about the following prompts:
When you hurt me I felt . . .
The worst thing that you said or did was . . .
What I was most afraid of was . . .
What I wish I had said to you then, but never told you was . . .
What you could never take from me is . . .
I know that I am strong because . . .
What I want you to know about me now is . . .
3. Boundary Clarity/Observing Limits
Natureza Gabriel Kram explains that “developing boundary clarity is about learning to tune into and experience, at a visceral level, the direct energy of the defensive responses.” Because fawning overrides the fight response, which is at times necessary for self-protection, practicing boundary clarity helps us reconnect with the limits that we’ve surrendered to accommodate others. One way to do this is to allow ourselves to experience and validate anger. Instead of automatically inhibiting anger, allow it, feel the biological energy of anger in the body, and invite it to take the form of an action toward assertive self-advocacy. It could mean expressing what we don’t feel good about, making a direct request to address our need, and perhaps sometimes pulling away from relationships that curtail our authenticity.
4. Allyship
We can draw strength and courage to end toxic stress cycles through the power of allyship. When we become aware of the cultural forces that shape the fawn response in females, it awakens us to the need for standing up together. Allyship means standing up for ourselves, for our mothers, our daughters, nieces, friends, co-workers and fully embracing our value. Allyship can be practiced in everyday life by assertively responding to micro-aggressions experienced by women. A Harvard Business Review article (2022) notes that most commonly, these micro-aggressions involve invalidation of competence, invalidation of physical presence, and diminishing or denying gender bias when it is brought up. It is important that we educate ourselves on what to look for, to speak up, and reach out to one another.
About the Author:
Dr. Joanna Herrera is a licensed psychologist in the Philippines and in California. She obtained Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology from The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California and completed predoctoral and fellowship training at the UCSF-Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. She has been a clinical supervisor for MA/PhD clinicians, developed mental health programs, and became the director of a community mental health program in the San Francisco-Bay Area. She currently holds practice as a clinical psychologist, provides services and consultation to organizations, and is involved in the training and supervision of mental health professionals in the Philippines. Dr. Herrera is President and Co-Founder of We Thrive Consultancy and Wellbeing Services, Inc. and the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Circle of Hope, a non-profit organization. She started formal mindfulness training in 2008 and is a mindfulness practitioner. She is intensively trained in DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), trauma-informed treatment, early childhood mental health, clinical supervision, and mindfulness-based clinical interventions among others.
If you’re a student or young adult, you must have reached a point of disorientation from having too much schoolwork to do or too many work engagements to finish. If you’re a parent, you may have either heard your child saying “Sabaw na ‘ko,” as if they could no longer listen to whatever you were about to say, or you may have felt “sabaw” yourself with all the things that need to get done around the house. Thing is, all of us must have experienced being sabaw at least once in our lives, and probably multiple times when we stay in an environment where there is too much going on.
So, why does being sabaw happen?
Being sabaw, or what we call a ‘cognitive overload’, happens when our brain cannot adapt to the amount of information given (often an amount that is too much), or to the too many tasks that need to be done at once. As a result, processing information and performing tasks becomes more difficult, and at worst, not even possible.
No matter how keen a person may be, they have a limit to how much they can process in a given amount of time. Even the most intelligent of people can process only so much.
When it comes to being sabaw, some respond with frustration while some may even respond to it lightly with humor (e.g., Nako, sabaw ka na naman, friend!). Regardless of what you feel about being sabaw, it can be reassuring to know that you don’t always have to be held back by it. So, here are five ways to overcome it:
Five ways to overcome being sabaw:
1. Try to stay away from distractions.
In the time of social media, it is so easy to be swept by the urge to check your phone, go to social media and check out what is interesting to see. Chances are, you may not immediately feel sabaw after browsing through your phone but you may feel it as soon as you get back to your important task, especially if what you had just consumed was heavy or engaging information. Eliminate other sources of distracting information by going to a peaceful environment, whether it’s a specific room in the house or a coffee shop with few to no distractions, and turn off/ silence your phone. Lastly, bring your phone back as a reward for completing a task.
2. Do one thing at a time.
Contrary to popular opinion, multiple studies have shown that multitasking is not very beneficial—it actually makes us less efficient and more prone to errors. The negative impact of multitasking to folding laundry while watching TV or listening to music may not be as felt as when you write an email while listening to a meeting. The disadvantage of multitasking is more clearly seen when tasks become more complex. One study had found that heavy multitaskers (those who believe that multitasking helps them with their performance) actually performed worse in the activity of multitasking than those who like doing one thing at a time. This is because the multitaskers had more difficulty organizing their thoughts and were slower in switching from one task to another—essentially, multitaskers are more highly like get into a state of sabaw in the midst of accomplishing tasks. So, learn to set other things aside and try to focus your energy and effort on one thing at a time.
3. Take breaks and don’t do other work in those breaks.
If you have freed yourself from distractions and learned how to do things one at a time, you may still find yourself feeling sabaw if you overuse your brain for a prolonged amount of time. Hence, taking a break is helpful regardless of how simple or how complex a task is. It’s just that you’re more likely to get sabaw sooner when you solve a series of calculus equations within an hour as compared to reading a light novel within the same duration. You can do anything during your break as long as it is not work. Meanwhile, the length of breaks that you need may depend on various factors such as your current health state (e.g. whether or not you’ve had enough rest, sleep, and energy), the complexity of the task, and the urgency of finishing the task. But if everything is kept constant, taking a break of 15-20 minutes every after 50-90 minutes is considered beneficial and can keep you from being sabaw. Going beyond 20 minutes, of course, will not make you even more sabaw although it may affect other important priorities in your activity such as momentum and productivity.
4. Plot a schedule and write notes for reminders of activities that you need to get back to.
Sometimes the list of things that you have to accomplish can get very overwhelming. Even if you try to take breaks, you still get overwhelmed and fear that you’d hit that state of sabaw soon. If that does happen, then that is likely a result of too much mental activity consumed by the worrying of other activities that haven’t even started yet. To help bring you at peace and certainty, try to plot a schedule for the set of activities that you need to get done and put them on paper or in a digital note. Relying too much on our working memory for reminders and specific details can sometimes be disadvantageous given that our brain can only take in information at a certain capacity. Unnecessary worry and stress may ease when you have realistic schedules and plans in place.
5. Withdraw from other commitments or other activities.
There are many aspects in our lives that demand our attention, may it be school, work, family, community, and relationships. But sometimes, they can lead us to overcommitment. The initial consequence of overcommitting can be feeling sabaw at first, then burnout after. If you have done tip #4 and still find yourself overwhelmed, it may be possible that your schedule of activities and/ or commitments may be unrealistic and too tiring for you. In that case, learn how to let go by saying no, turning over the responsibility to someone else, ask for help to relieve the responsibility from you, or a combination of all of those. Our brains can only handle so much that when we force things, we may end up accomplishing less commitments than what we had initially expected because of too many sabaw moments and burnout.
“‘Cause when you get older, life gets colder Sometimes I just wanna hit pause, but I’m afraid I’ll never press play again…”
Clara Benin
When was the last time you checked in with yourself and asked how you’re truly doing?
With all the demands that life throws at us, we may easily fall into the trap of mindlessness, juggling many things all at once without examining ourselves in the process; thereby, running the risk of wearing ourselves out in the long run. Add to it the culture we live in where busyness, overproductivity, and urgency are being glorified. Who has the luxury to be still a few minutes in a day when work pressures you to submit it now? Who even cares about how you feel when outputs have become implied measures of one’s worth? If we won’t make deliberate choices for our wellbeing, these can be detrimental to our health and our ability to flourish as we live this one precious life we’re gifted with.
Press Pause and Tune In
Think of the self like a musical instrument, say, for example, a guitar. It would be pointless to sing and be accompanied by it if the instrument is out of tune. In order to maximize the value and function of a guitar (and this goes with most instruments), it has to be set in proper tuning. Too much tightness could cause the strings to break. On the other end, when you don’t plan to use the guitar for quite some time, it’s best to loosen up the strings in order to prevent them from possibly breaking.
The same goes for us, human beings. When we’re constantly exposed to stress and we’re unable to release the tension, it affects how we think, feel and relate with others in negative ways. Moreover, our bodies will eventually suffer and it may manifest as physical illnesses. In order to be at our optimal selves, we need to pause, tune ourselves, and acknowledge where we are at the moment with gentleness and self-compassion.
Tuning ourselves may look different for each of us, just like getting quality sleep, eating healthy foods, ensuring that we’re regularly connected with the people we love and who support us, having a me-time, creating space to feel both pleasant and unpleasant emotions, being mindfully aware as thoughts and feelings come and go in the present moment. The last two may take time some practice in order to cultivate such awareness, but one tool has been helpful in making it happen— music.
Permission to feel
Who gave you permission to feel?
Music.
What seemed to be just a moment of mindless scrolling on Twitter ended up as an “aha!” moment that eventually led me to reflective mode, just like how you listen to a song for the first time, and it suddenly hits right in the feels. Familiar, isn’t it?
Whether as a listener or creator, one cannot deny the power of music in evoking emotions. We know from experience how music gives us the comfort we need when going through difficult times, the focus and energy boost in completing tasks, and even transporting us back into key events in our lives where we try to make meaning and reconstruct our own narrative. It serves a myriad of functions, most especially in enhancing our wellbeing.
Music and wellbeing
1. Music as a safe space for feelings
“Perhaps the therapeutic use of music allows people to experience emotions safely… (Wilkinson, 2018).” Remember the moments you listened to music when you needed a good cry or you need to feel calm. Maybe the lyrics resonated with what you’re currently going through, which gives you a sense of comfort, the feeling of being held, and the validation that you’re not alone. Or, if you’re a musician and you’re trying to capture your feelings into melodies, the act of playing your instrument becomes cathartic for you. A song is like a friend who provides that safe, grounding, and non-judgmental space that gives you permission to feel in that present moment. Joy, sadness, fear, anger, hope, love, awe— all emotions are welcome here. These “permission to feel” moments are important in maintaining our wellbeing since it allows us to acknowledge the complexities of our emotions which is key to emotion regulation, instead of running away or numbing them.
A qualitative study by Saarikallio (2010) explored music-related strategies of emotional self-regulation during adulthood and found that participants turn to music for:
happy mood maintenance
revival and relaxation especially when tired
strong sensations and powerful emotional experiences such as intense enjoyment, deep concentration and emotional involvement in music (e.g. being part of an opera production or watching a live concert)
diversion or distraction from unwanted thoughts and feelings
discharge and disclosure—that is, releasing and venting anger or sadness through music that expressed these emotions
mental work such as being able to face, contemplate and work through unsettling emotional experiences,
solace— acting like a comforting friend who understands and accepts you when you feel sad, melancholic or hopeless; and
‘psyching up’— uplifting one’s mood and raisingone’s energy levels for an activity.
2. Music helps us get “in the zone”
Being completely absorbed in an activity that you lose track of time is known as flow or commonly known as “in the zone”. This intense and focused concentration on the present moment can be achieved through the help of music. You may recall a time that listening to an ambient or instrumental music helped you stay focused in finishing a task such as writing or studying for an exam. According to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (2014), the main proponent of the concept of flow:
“merely having music playing in the background does not evoke flow, but listening to music as the main activity so that attention can be focused on the music is an important precondition for getting into and staying in flow.”
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (2014)
The key then is to listen mindfully to the music. To practice, set aside at least five minutes to listen mindfully to a song of your choice (one that doesn’t have lyrics), sit with it and listen to all the elements used in the song, from the instruments used to how it’s arranged. As you cultivate mindful listening to the music, it increases your likelihood of getting into flow.
3. Music as a tool for enhancing social connections
There is no doubt that music is best enjoyed when it is experienced and shared with others— whether that could take in a form of singing together in a group (karaoke sessions), teaching another person on how to play an instrument, meeting strangers who have turned into friends in a concert of your favorite band, curating a playlist for your loved one and sharing it to them ‘cause that’s your love language, or being part of a fan group and interacting with the artist. Sometimes, when we’re having difficulty in articulating our thoughts and feelings to our friends, it helps to share instead a song that relates to our experience so that our friend would understand where we are. Koelsch (2013) reviews the social functions of music such as being able to increase contact, coordination and cooperation with others, engage in social cognition wherein the listener tries to understand the intent and message of the artist expressed in the song, participate in co-pathy (a social function of empathy), which all leads to social cohesion— satisfying our human need to belong.
Truly, music allows us to feel connected to all of humanity. Music indeed is a gift to us, especially as we continue to take care of our wellbeing. May we practice tuning in to ourselves with the help of music, allowing it to take us to places of our souls that need some tending. And just “be”.
Sources:
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collectedworks of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8
Saarikallio, S. (2010). Music as emotional self-regulation throughout adulthood. Psychology of Music, 39(3), 307–327. doi:10.1177/0305735610374894
Wilkinson, R. (2018). Foreword. In N. Sunderland, N. Lewandowski, D. Bendrups, B.L. Bartleet, Music, Health and Wellbeing Exploring Music for Health Equity and Social Justice. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95284-7
Growing up, I have had a love-hate relationship with arts. Back in pre-school, I remembered how my classmates and teacher laughed at my artwork during a show and tell. I no longer wanted to do art since then. I thought, maybe, art was not for me. In my teen years, I rekindled my relationship with arts. At this time, it was arts that helped me cope with my personal challenges as an adolescent. I kept a journal with poems and drawings to express the feelings I cannot express with my friends and loved ones. I also got into theater and felt a cathartic experience as I released my emotions through the characters I portray. Visual arts, poetry and theater became my best friend who listen without judgment.
My first encounter with a mindfulness practice was through Inner Dance Conscious Meditation. Inner Dance is a spiritual healing modality rooted in ancient Filipino Shamanic “Babaylan” tradition. Inner Dance infuses meditation, intuitive free flowing movement, and energy healing to connect with inner awareness of body, mind, and emotion. Through Inner Dance, I was able to connect with my body and learned to be more compassionate with myself.
With these experiences, came my desire to dive deep into learning more about the fusion of expressive arts and mindfulness. With that said, I would like to share 4 simple ways on how to use expressive arts and mindfulness to improve our well-being. But before that, let us enumerate the definitions of these two concepts.
Mindfulness is “moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, that is, in the present moment and as non-reactively, as non-judgmentally, and as openheartedly as possible.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Expressive arts as defined by International Expressive Arts Therapy Association® (IEATA®) as, “combination of visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing and other creative processes to foster deep personal growth and community development.”
Reading through these technical definitions, we can say that these two concepts fits well together. Why? When we think of doing any form of art expression, whether it is drawing, writing, music making or movement, our first thought or reaction might be, “Do I have the ability to make this art expression appear pleasant to other people?”. We already come up with judgement, a resistance, a reaction because we grew up in an environment where art has standard.
While expressive arts invite us to use different modalities without focus on the aesthetics; mindfulness can help us participate in expressive arts activities, by being fully present, moment to moment, non judgmentally and with openness.
Mindfulness and expressive arts have been integrated in different practices such as Focusing-Oriented Expressive Arts (FOAT) and Mindfulness-Based Art Therapy (MBAT). These approaches were discussed by the psychologist, Dr. Laury Rappaport in her book “Mindfulness and the Arts Therapies.” These approaches are widely used in different settings and population. According to Dr. Rappaport, we can trace back the roots of mindfulness and expressive arts in ancient rituals, religious and indigenous practices and these has brought community healing and transformation. The experience of doing any form of art expression gives us access to witness our inner experience and become absorbed in a state of flow. Mindfulness complements this experience by bringing self-compassion, non-judgmental, openness and being in the present moment.
Alright! Enough with the definitions! Let us now try some simple mindfulness and expressive arts activities you can do on your own at your most convenient time.
Mindful breathing with vocal toning
Do you notice that you unconsciously sigh with sound when you’re feeling exasperated or feeling a sense of relief? It’s because your body regulates itself through rhythm and sound. According to Peter Levine, making any sound stimulate the ventral vagal nerve and calm your body. Let’s try combining mindful breathing and sound making. Here are the steps:
Find a place where you can’t be disturbed. It’s best that you do this gentle movements in bare foot so you can feel the ground.
Stand straight, your feet slightly apart. Make sure your weight is evenly distributed on the soles of your feet.
Notice the sensation of your feet touching the ground. Is the ground cold or warm? Rough or smooth? Notice the feeling of support of the ground where your feet touch.
Bring gentle attention to your breathing. Notice the sensation of the air coming in and out of your nose, and the rising and falling of your chest and stomach. Also, notice the pace of your breathing. There’s nothing to change. Just notice your breathing with curiosity, gentleness, compassion and non-judgement.
Follow the pace of your breathing together with gentle movements. Raise your arms as you inhale. Move your arms downwards as you exhale.
Notice the sensation in your body as you repeatedly do this movement. Are there any thoughts, feelings, emotions coming up Be kind, gentle, welcoming, compassionate and curious towards any feeling or thought that may come.
Mindful breathing with movements
In Cathy Malchiodi’s book entitled, Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy, she combined grounding and anchoring together with some gentle body movements to help the client focus or attention to the here and now. Let’s try some gentle movements combined with our breathing. Here are the steps:
Find a place where you can’t be disturbed. It’s best that you do this gentle movements in barefoot so you can feel the ground.
Stand straight, your feet slightly apart. Make sure your weight is evenly distributed on the soles of your feet.
Notice the sensation of your feet touching the ground. Is the ground cold or warm? Rough or smooth? Notice the feeling of support of the ground where your feet touch.
Bring gentle attention to your breathing. Notice the sensation of the air coming in and out of your nose, and the rising and falling of your chest and stomach. Also, notice the pace of your breathing. There’s nothing to change. Just notice your breathing with curiosity, gentleness, compassion and non-judgement.
Follow the pace of your breathing together with gentle movements. Raise your arms as you inhale. Move your arms downwards as you exhale.
Notice the sensation in your body as you repeatedly do this movement. Are there any thoughts, feelings, emotions coming up? Be kind, gentle, welcoming, compassionate and curious to any feeling or thought that may come.
Mindful breathing while doodling
Another way to anchor our attention to the here and now is called drawing the breath. For Cathy Malchiodi, this is a non-threatening way to combine mindfulness and self-regulation. Now, let’s try this simple mindful breathing with doodling exercise. Here are the steps:
Prepare any kind of paper or writing instrument for this exercise. Find a comfortable place where you cannot be disturbed.
Bring gentle attention to your breathing. Notice the sensation of the air coming in and out of your nose, and the rising and falling of your chest and stomach. Also, notice the pace of your breathing. There’s nothing to change. Just notice your breathing with curiosity, gentleness, compassion and non-judgement.
Following the pace and depth of your breath, make any line stroke on your paper that represents your inhale and exhale. It could be an upstroke for every inhale or downstroke with every exhale. Explore different line strokes, there is no right or wrong way of expressing it.
Notice the sensation in your body as you repeatedly doodle together with your breathing. Are there any thoughts, feelings, emotions coming up? Be kind, gentle, welcoming, compassionate or curious to any feeling or thought that may come.
Reflective free-flowing
Shaun McNiff has suggested the process of conscious reflection of what is happening in the present moment. In the last three activities that we did, we tried to be kind, gentle, welcoming, compassionate and curious to the different sensations, thoughts and feelings that arise. In this last activity, let us try to do contemplative writing by expressing our experience in a free-flowing writing. Here are some guidelines when doing reflective free flow writing exercise.
Just let the words flow.
Do not try to sensor what you write.
Do not mind the grammar, language, or form.
Feel free to write it in the language you are comfortable expressing.
Just continuously write until you have exhausted all the feelings or thoughts you have experienced whether it is a pleasant or unpleasant.
When you are done, read what you wrote and sense inside how does this experience feel inside your body.
As Pablo Picasso once said, “Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” We hope that these simple mindfulness and expressive arts exercises were able to help you dust off the everyday stress you are experiencing.
References:
About Us. ieata. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2022, from https://www.ieata.org/
Art Of Healing Dr Amir Farid Isahak. (2019, July 29). Inner dance of healing qi. The Star. Retrieved April 21, 2022, from https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/viewpoints/art-of-healing/2008/06/22/inner-dance-of-healing-qi
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2018). Meditation is not what you think. Piatkus.
Malchiodi, C. A. (2020). Trauma and expressive arts therapy: Brain, body, and imagination in the healing process. NY: Guilford Publications
Rappaport, L. (2009). Focusing-oriented art therapy: Accessing the body’s wisdom and creative intelligence. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Rappaport, L. (2014). Mindfulness and the arts therapies: Theory and practice. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
As parents, we are fueled by what is best for our children. We want our children to grow stable, well-adjusted and equipped with skills to survive, as well as thrive in life.
These lofty goals make parenting fulfilling and meaningful, and it is also no easy feat. There is the constant pressure to know how to provide and respond to the needs of our child at any given moment. But let’s face it, we have moments when we wonder if what we’re doing is really what’s best for our children. We question our capacity to parent our children.
I can’t seem to pacify my child during a meltdown.
My child refuses to listen and follow what I say.
My teen doesn’t want to talk to me about anything.
I get so upset and angry with my child, it’s so frustrating.
In these situations, we usually try to manage our children’s behavior by using strong, hurtful words and punitive action.
If you don’t pack away your toys, no You Tube time this afternoon.
You’re going to get into a lot of trouble if you don’t finish your homework.
Stop acting like a baby, it’s not a big deal.
Because I said so.
We threaten, we bribe, we punish, we withdraw certain privileges in the hopes of getting our children to behave and comply. We become dismissive of our children. We take control of the situation with little consideration or understanding what our kids might be going through. Let’s take a moment to notice, if any of the scripts and strategies above have been effective or helpful in the long run? Most likely, no. These may even serve to escalate the situation, to provide quick fixes until the unwanted behavior happens again, and to rupture relationships instead of our original parenting intention of long-lasting caring and raising our children well.
What can we as parents do?
What are more effective ways of dealing with children, especially during difficult and upsetting situations? What will work, what can be more helpful for parents and children to overcome tough moments
Dr. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s Whole Brain (2014) approach to parenting, offers a place to start. This perspective places emphasis on understanding the way the brain works and develops. The brain shapes who we are and what we do. It has various components and functions that need to work together for us to achieve balance and integration.
Emphasis is further placed on how the brain’s capacity for integration is significantly shaped by experience.
The experiences and responses parents provide, lay the foundation for children’s development towards stability, independence and resilience. With appropriate supports, we help our children improve decision-making and problem-solving, have better control of their body and emotions and strengthen themselves and their relationships.
Are these not some of the very things we want for our children, to find success in various aspects of life and development?
The 3 C’s towards Effective Parenting
How can this be achieved?
The 3 C’s of Calm, Connect and Cultivate can serve as a quick guide.
Developing the skill and practice to Calm, Connect and Cultivate, underscore the importance of being attuned to our child in the middle of chaos and conflict. Developing regulation and co-regulation skills can help improve the ways we relate with our children, especially during tough situations –when your child kicks, screams, refuses to listen, refuses to respond, when your child is inconsolable.
1. CALM
We cannot calm our child when we are not calm ourselves.
It truly is easier said than done, but it can be done with practice, patience and intention! Self-regulation can become our parent superpower when we are mindful of our current feelings and reactions during stressful situations, and aware of our own thoughts and beliefs about the behavior of our children.
When we learn how to self-soothe and bring about a state of calm, we create a space to recognize that difficult behaviors are cues which tell us that children are having a tough time. Children may experience big feelings which they may not necessarily recognize or have the skills yet to deal with more effectively. So they act up and act all sorts of out of control. If we meet their frustration with our own, the situation escalates as emotions go unchecked and unvalidated, and behaviors become more difficult to manage.
Pause and take a breath
Taking a few moments to pause, breathing in and out allows us to calm feelings and to step back from a triggering situation and potentially intense emotions. It also models behavior that we can cultivate in children when they are going through a tough time.
Self-affirming statements
Self-soothing statements can also be effective as it builds an awareness to one’s current state. Words of affirmation such as, “My feelings are valid,” or “I can’t control how I feel, and I can control how I respond,” or “I am doing my best at this moment,” convey messages that build self-compassion and self-kindness. It affirms the intentionality of supporting and connecting with our children. There are a myriad of statements, and it is about choosing powerful statements that calms and build toughness too.
Self-soothing activities
There are many other ways to pause and self-soothe to prepare yourself to connect with your child. These depend on what works and what is available to you. Simple activities like taking a short walk, listening to music, playing with a pet, writing or drawing in a journal are some examples.
Think before you speak
Training oneself to take pause and being mindful of the words we say builds a practice of regulating the self and controlling impulses. Take pause to think if your words are helpful and supportive of your child, or if it conveys validation and support. Thinking before speaking implies taking pause and bring the calm in to make better decisions about what and how to communicate and connect.
Practicing these regularly not only during stressful times, strengthen the mind and the body to respond to difficult situations in a more mindful way. We become less reactive when we are calm. The ability to self-regulate builds our patience to take pause and wait for our children to be ready to engage. Being calm and staying calm then allows us to connect.
2. CONNECT
The warm and responsive interactions between parents and children especially during moments of stress and chaos and conflict, are opportunities for children to learn to understand and modulate their thoughts, feelings and behavior. When a parent feels calm, connection with their children can follow as both parent and child strive to reach states of calm. A child learns to respond instead of react when the parent models this and teaches the child regulation skills, when the child is good and ready.
A parent who takes a non-reactive, non-threatening stance allows the child to feel seen and heard, to regain a sense of control to listen and to make more thoughtful decisions of responding and behaving more effectively.
Give affection
During a meltdown, a child is so overcome with emotion and can feel threatened and unsafe with the intensity of their feelings. A warm hug, gentle stroking of the hair or a soft back rub can give children a sensory experience to ground them in the present, a space to recognize difficulties currently encountered. This allows discovery of their ability to recover. A parent’s calm supportive presence even without words sends the message that you are there for your child when he or she needs you most.
Speak in a soothing, calm voice
Speaking in a low and slow voice similarly helps soothe a child, allowing the child to feel intense negative emotions, and to sit with the discomfort as you the parent hold a space of trust and comfort.
HALT
Staying with your child (while in a Calm state) allows you to assess the function of the behavior. Some of these functions include Hunger, Anger, Loneliness and Tiredness. Decoding the particular trigger and function of behavior facilitates a more appropriate response thereby building skills and character.
Actively listen to your child
This strategy involves mirroring what a child tells you and conveying back to your child the meaning as well as the content of what was said. This gives a child the sense that his or her feelings and thoughts are valid and that you the parent recognize these.
Validate and emphatize
Statements like, “Don’t worry about it,” or “Just relax,” or “You’re just tired,” may seem harmless but they are actually dismissive and serve to invalidate and minimize the experience and feelings of the child, without us noticing it. Similarly, statements like “Just do it again,” or “Just stop crying, it’s not a big deal” gloss over the challenges that children are facing, indirectly telling them that it’s not okay to feel the way that they do in that moment.
Statements of validation and empathy that reflect what the child is feeling and going through, are empowering for a child and helps them be ready and open to engage and communicate further. When done successfully, this can open more spaces to connect and cultivate ways to teach and support children to respond to feelings and situations more mindfully.
There are many different ways of connecting with the child in times of chaos and distress, and it’s about finding which are most helpful for you as a parent, for your particular child and what response or strategy would be appropriate at the given moment.
3. CULTIVATE
The suggested strategies for calming and connecting outlined above can be helpful if it is cultivated. It is discovering and building practices to nurture and protect the parent-child relationship. Learning how to calm and connect will help ease the process of teaching children to be reflective, to learn skills and gain insight on themselves in relation to others, and to figure out how they can respond better to those around them. We cultivate practice to become more intentional in responding to our children – building nurturing relationships with them, inspired by connection and teaching with care and compassion.
It is also important to remember to cultivate practice in the everyday moments. Our lives are filled with the small day to day moments, that provide rich ground to parent our children most effectively. A gentle word, a comforting hug, and the many other ways we choose to nurture and connect with our children are opportunities to shape our relationship with them, and to equip them with skills that will help them live with kindness, intention and resilience.
References:
Rosanbalm, K. D., & Murray, D. W. (2018). Co-regulation from birth through young adulthood: A practice brief. Duke University, 1-10.
Compassion, which we can understand as the sharing in and a desire to relieve the suffering of others, comes naturally to us as human beings. It is one of our most potent qualities, and is a cornerstone of human societies and the dream for every person to have a conscience formed and directed by aspirations of justice, peace, and cooperation. However, this precious resource has many facilitators and inhibitors, and like all human potentials can be broadened or restricted. Drawing from our clinical work and inspired by the UN’s recognition of the International Day of Conscience last 5th of April, this article will describe what it means to have a “compassionate conscience” and offer three general questions to help direct us towards cultivating our capacities for compassion: whether we are “aware” of suffering; whether we are “moved” by suffering; and whether we “desire” to relieve suffering.
Defining Compassion
Compassion can be understood simply as “the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.”1 Emphasizing its action-oriented nature, compassion is distinguishable from the related emotion of “empathy”, defined as the “mirroring or understanding of another’s emotion”.2 Despite the cynicism of mainstream conversations (and sadly much of modern psychology until fairly recently), it is deeply rooted in the human condition: as professor and author Dr. Dacher Keltner puts it, compassion is “an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains”, the “evolved instinct to help other people is a reflex”.3 And it does appear that human minds evolved the neural hardwiring for this sharing in another’s pain in some way.4 We’ve even seen how exercising “self-compassion” — the directing of kindness and understanding inwards, to our own suffering — can literally ease the experience of pain in the context of chronic illnesses.5 It has rightly provoked intense interest among scientists, hence the growing body of work focusing on its clinical application along with related practices such as “loving-kindness” and “mindfulness”.6 All this to say is that compassion comes naturally to us, and is one of our most potent qualities.
But as the clinical psychologist and founder of Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) Dr. Paul Gilbert puts it: “Compassion too has its facilitators and inhibitors.”7
Many factors can affect our capacities for compassion: whether we were encouraged growing up to engage in compassionate works; our own personal resources; whether our own beliefs about specific compassionate acts (e.g. giving change to a poor stranger) aligned with the moral value we assign to social questions (e.g. poverty determined mainly by individual effort or systemic factors); whether, because of formative experiences, we safe enough in our own bodies to handle the compassionate impulse and the potency of its accompanying emotions; and many others.
For the frontliners of the pandemic, without whom our entire country may have simply collapsed, there was “compassion fatigue”: a deep physical and emotional exhaustion that sets in as a response to an overwhelming loss of human life and livelihood, when there is an accumulation of the suffering of those they serve and not enough space and resources to process and recover.8 Given how helpless we all were in many instances, we might relate to the very unpleasant feelings that came when our compassion was unable to express itself in ways we desired, including shame, doubt, guilt, and even anger.9 Like all human potentials, our potential for compassion can also be disturbed.
Compassion, whether it’s the capacity to offer it to others or accept it for ourselves, is a precious resource. It is the cornerstone of the well-formed conscience and the bedrock of the dream of a “culture of peace”, which the United Nations described as “a positive, dynamic, participatory process linked intrinsically to democracy, justice and development for all by which differences are respected, dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are constantly transformed by non-violent means into new avenues of cooperation.”10 If compassion ought to come naturally, which appears to be what the research is currently telling us, then how might we build on it? What kind of questions can we ask to direct us, especially when our capacities for compassion are obstructed in some way?
Three questions for cultivating compassion
For the former Buddhist monk and scholar of religious studies Dr. Thupten Jinpa, compassion is made up of different components, three of which we will look at here.11 While these components overlap in actual human experience, making some distinctions can help us generate useful reflections.
1. “Are we aware of suffering?”
The cognitive aspect of compassion requires that we recognize that pain exists, both in ourselves and in others. But recognition cannot remain an abstraction; compassion is directed and active. Our ability to know suffering can be hampered by ignorance: we may not have an understanding that a person experiences pain in some way because we are unaware of their context and needs. It can also be hampered by prejudice: we might assume we understand a person even if we have not really begun to enter into a real knowledge of who they are. It may not have anything to do with the other person at all: something in our conditioning, past or present, may be keeping us from seeing suffering for what it really is. So what is keeping us from being really aware? Are we really paying attention to what that person is going through? Do our assumptions about that person take up too much headspace? And are there ways of doing things we learned growing up that have left gaps in our perception?
“Are we moved by suffering?”
The affective aspect of compassion requires that this recognition of pain reaches the heart. Put another way, the experience must be felt bodily, and not just at the level of the thought. But like our ability to see, our ability to feel can also be hampered. It may be physical or emotional fatigue: as such, our energy might be directed at conserving energy and towards the things that offer rest or familiar comforts.Our beliefs about suffering might also become like gatekeepers to our emotions: values inherited from our families and communities might have led us to believe that our suffering is somehow correlated with notions of merit or of what people do or do not deserve. Perhaps these same values do not adequately accommodate the fact that suffering is inevitable. It may also be that our bodies may have too much or too little sensitivity to pain, and the effort we put into trying to regulate how much we expose ourselves diverts these emotional resources away from compassion. So what is keeping us from being really present to these feelings? Are our bodies getting enough rest? Do some of our beliefs create barriers rather than openings for feelings of compassion? And do our bodies, whether it has become accustomed to too much or too little pain, allow for these feelings to be felt?
“Do we want to relieve suffering?”
The intent aspect of compassion requires that this experience of the pain of others has an outlet. From the head to the heart, it must then travel outward through speech and action. After all, that is exactly what the etymology of compassion means: to suffer with others. But this suffering with others is not about the passive taking in of pain, but an active partaking in it towards some kind of resolution. We might express this compassion by contributing time and resources to charitable works. We might also express this by becoming a kind of reference point for compassion, whose presence communicates safety and love, so that others might feel safe enough to approach for consolation. We also manifest this intention by directing it inward, at our own pains, and practicing on ourselves what others might ask of us: forgiveness, understanding, and openness to our own failings as human beings with as many flaws as gifts. So what is keeping us from expressing our compassionate impulses as concrete actions? Are we paying attention to the logistics of these compassionate impulses, so that we know what we have to offer? Are we paying attention to how we respond to others, so that we know whether our actions communicate an invitation of safety and warmth? And are we paying attention to how we react to our own experiences, so that we know that we give first to ourselves the compassion we offer others?
As we pass through what we hope to be the worst that the pandemic has to offer, it is important to recognize how our capacities for compassion have been tested and what this might mean for us moving forward. By reflecting on the things which expand or contract the depth and breadth of our compassionate impulses, we can continue to exercise this precious human instinct with less dread about how little we have been able to offer and more hope about how much we can do for ourselves and others within our own spaces.
Lamm, C., Decety, J., and Singer, T. (2011). dMeta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. NeuroImage,(54), 2492-2502. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.10.014.
Wren, A.A., Somers, T.J., Wright, M.A., Goetz, M.C., Leary, M.R., Fras, A.M., Huh, B.K., Rogers, L.L., and Keefe, F.J. (2012). Self-Compassion in Patients With Persistent Musculoskeletal Pain: Relationship of Self-Compassion to Adjustment to Persistent Pain. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, (43)4, 759-770, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2011.04.014.
Hofmann, S. G., Grossman, P., & Hinton, D. E. (2011). Loving-kindness and compassion meditation: potential for psychological interventions. Clinical psychology review, 31(7), 1126–1132. DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2011.07.003.
Gilbert, P. (2014). The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 53, 6-41. DOI: 10.1111/bjc.12043.
I’ve always been a huge animal lover- I’ve had almost every type of pet imaginable, from cats, dogs, hamsters, birds, and to something as exotic as an iguana. I can’t imagine my life without them and I really value what they have brought and taught me in life. Did you know that even our scientist Sigmund Freud had a favorite dog who never left his side even when doing therapy! Jofi was a chow that people were used to seeing in Freud’s office and “Freud claimed that he never needed to look at his watch during a session, as when Jofi got up and yawned it meant that the allotted hour was over. She was never late.” Essentially Freud became an animal lover himself!
I had a roommate from college who was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and living with her, I saw how much she struggled getting out of bed, going to classes, eating, and trying to get herself out of the room. A year after our freshman year, her father got her a dog and his name was Hershey! Hershey was the cutest thing ever, he was a miniature poodle who loved to socialize and to play. After my roommate adopted Hershey, I slowly saw her more outside her room hanging out with me and our other friends. How due to Hershey she was taking more walks outside, even though there are days where she struggled to go on those walks, in the end the strolls with Hershey definitely lifted her mood after! I lived with my roommate for 4 years and I was able to see a dog like Hershey be able to support and to save my roommate’s life making her realize that life is worth living!
Research says that having the companionship of a pet really does have positive effects on our bodies. Pets are able to support humans through reducing stress, depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
“Studies have demonstrated a reduction in cortisol, a hormone associated with stress level, as well as systolic and diastolic blood pressure following interaction with a therapy animal”
Animal-Assisted Therapy as a Complementary Intervention for Mindfulness-Based Therapies (Atherton, Dunbar Jr. & Baker)
They are beneficial to cardiovascular health because they naturally advocate exercise and play! The animal- human bond is undeniable!
“Caring for an animal can help children become more secure and active as they grow older. Pets can also provide older adults with much-needed companionship. But, maybe most importantly, a pet can provide you with true joy and unconditional love.”
The Health and Mood-Boosting Benefits of Pets (Helpguide.org)
Wouldn’t knowing this will want you to go and get a pet right away!
But definitely before you get your loving companion, please do some research first and talk with other professionals in the pet stores or animal shelters to find out which animal is best for you to adopt- but even if you are not able to adopt a pet, having some animal interaction will also help you!
I came across a study that was titled “Pets and Happiness: Examining the Association between Pet Ownership and Wellbeing.” One part of the study is that they compared the well-being of pet owners to non-pet owners through a questionnaire and found that there was not much difference in the results in terms of well-being and personality, “Pet owners were higher in satisfaction with life than non-owners, but the two groups did not differ in happiness, positive emotions, or negative emotions.” One of the factors was that individuals are considerably more elated when they initially adopt their pet, and as time passes, they gradually return to their “baseline” well-being, which is known as hedonic adaptation. That grabbed my attention because I never thought of it that way! The article says that “It is possible that this cognitive part of well-being is more resistant to adaptation since pet owners still consider their relationship with their pet when rating their overall life satisfaction, but the pet has little effect on their actual, day-to-day experience of emotions.” I recall being ecstatic when I first adopted my puppy—of course, I am still extremely happy when I see my furry friend but I have now become accustomed to having them in my life and they have now become my new reality—a joyful norm.
This flowchart explains the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation- how we all get what we desire and after a while we go back to our “baseline level of affect.” (Photo credit: Productive Club)
I was also not expecting the results of this study to find very little difference in terms of happiness; I was expecting a significant difference—actually, I was expecting dramatic results because my dogs make me the happiest!
What can my pet and I do?
After doing some research about pets and wellbeing, it made me wonder what my dogs and I can do for each other to be able to enhance our wellbeing, especially during this pandemic where we spend most of our time at home with nothing much to do. According to the article “Dog tales: mindful dog interactions evoke similar experiences to dog assisted mindfulness meditations” the study looked at the feasibility and effectiveness of two six-week interventions that dog owners can conduct with their pets in the safety and comfort of their own homes, with the goal of improving both parties’ well-being. “Qualitative results supported that “the owner feeling happiness/enjoyment and relaxation/calm while completing the task, as well as feeling a sense of engagement and/or focus while completing the task, and enhanced emotional/spiritual connection with their dogs.” We can really see the positive effects of the intervention on the participants!
To answer the question of what you and your pet can do, here is a mindfulness exercise that you can try together!
Observe the animal that you are with, what do they look like? Look at the different parts of the animal and carefully notice every aspect of him/her
Listen to the sounds that it makes, does it make a sound?
Are you able to touch your animal? If you are able to, how does it feel?
If you are doing an activity together, how does your movement compare to the animal?
Jackson-Grossblat, A., Carbonell, N., & Waite, D. (2016). The Therapeutic Effects Upon Dog Owners Who Interact With Their Dogs in a Mindful Way. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 56(2), 144–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022167814559390
“You are the One treasure, so you need to come to knowwho you really are.”
-Sr. Rosario Battung, RGS, Zen Teacher and Social Activist
In a few days, we will be pausing in observance of the culmination of the Lenten season. Although a Catholic tradition, the Holy Week holiday can provide everyone, even those not religiously affiliated, a much-needed opportunity to take a step back and gain a grounding perspective in life.
Spirituality is one of the key dimensions to holistic wellbeing, and one’s spiritual experience does not have to be tied up with organized religion.
In a broader sense, as defined in the Wheel of Wellbeing (Sadigh & Sadigh, 2008), spirituality can be understood as “a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and a source greater than the material world. It means discovering the essence of our being and our deepest values by which we live by. It is the quest for finding the meaning of life and our life purpose.” Living with a deeper why is vital to our resilience. It gives us the courage, clarity, and determination to withstand the turbulent forces of change and adversity which will always be part of human life.
As we enter this period of sacred pause and reflection, allow me to share a deeply inspiring teaching from my Zen teacher, Sr. Rosario Battung. Sr. Rosario (Chayong as she was fondly called) lived an extraordinary life as a Catholic nun, a Zen practitioner for over four decades, and a social activist whose life became the inspiration for the critically-acclaimed Filipino film Sister Stella L. We had a private interview a few months before she passed away as is customary for teacher and student in Zen practice. At that moment, I knew that I was receiving an exquisite and very profound teaching, which I immediately transcribed in my journal. Little did I know that these were to be her “final instructions.” Her message has become more and more special each time I came home to it– alive and constantly reaching into my soul. It is my honor and joy to share with you the words of Sr. Rosario. I am sure you will find that it speaks to each and every human heart.
It is essential to know the art of paying full attention to yourself because it is this Self that reaches out to others. No one benefits when you put yourself aside. Instead, you need to be your full Self. The one responding needs to be full. We’re always on-the-go helping others, but we’re not doing justice to others and to ourselves unless we’re paying full attention to ourselves.
The bell of the present moment calls your name. Hold the horses and ask yourself, what is the main thing? Who is holding the reins of this present moment? What is at the heart of now? Face yourself and know what it is you need to be attending to.
Make space in your life to experience your True Self. It will tell you who you really are. You are distracted by helping others and set aside your innate Self. You think something else is more important other than your True Self.
There is one treasure hidden in one body. You are the One Treasure, so you need to come to know who you really are. Give your full attention to that One Treasure. Celebrate it with joy, your True Self is present.
One Treasure: An Invitation to Pause and Reflect
When have I experienced myself as the One Treasure? What did these moments feel like? What conditions made it possible for me to experience myself in this way?
In my everyday life, what gets in the way of experiencing the One Treasure, my full Self? What “horses” are preventing me from coming home to the present moment with my full Self?
What is one commitment that I could make to honor and discover this One Treasure?
