When hardship abounds, so does despair. Fortunately, humankind is also capable of experiencing another emotion when faced with adversity that can be cathartic for all concerned—compassion.

Compassion is natural in humans

Compassion, according to Emma Seppala, Science Director of the Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, entails an “emotional response when perceiving suffering” and “an authentic desire to help”.  Though we may be disheartened by global news coverage of our fractious and fragmented world, researchers posit that compassion is innate in animals and humans.

While our species can be callous, contemptuous and cruel, we also harbour a “natural tendency” towards compassion that has contributed to our survival, argues Seppala in a Psychology Today article.

In an experiment, conducted by Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues, participants were given a fixed amount of money. Half were instructed to spend it on themselves, while the other half were asked to spend it on others. Researchers then measured the happiness levels of all the participants. Contrary to what we might expect, the researchers found that people who spent money on others were more content than those who indulged themselves. Seppala argues that compassion benefits us at multiple levels.

Multiple benefits of compassion

Physiologically, people whose happiness stems from having a sense of purpose in life have low levels of cellular inflammation. In contrast, people who derive happiness from hedonistic pursuits exhibit high inflammation levels. Thus, purpose rather than pleasure seems to be conducive to our physical health. Further, lives imbued with purpose or meaning are more often other-directed as opposed to self-directed. Rather than viewing the world through a self-obsessed lens, a feature linked to many psychological problems like depression and anxiety, focussing our attention on others and their problems can widen our perspective.

Additionally, compassion also enhances our longevity, possibly by mitigating our stress levels. Seppala cites a study by Michal Poulin that found that stress is linked to mortality for most people. However, for “those who helped others,” the stress levels did not “predict mortality.”  Apparently, being of service to others nourishes the self.

How to cultivate compassion in times of adversity

In these bleak and uncertain times, are there things you can do to cultivate compassion? Indeed, there are! Let’s discuss a few ways you can cultivate compassion:

Meaningful contributions

In a blog post on PositivePsychology.com, psychologist Heather Lonczak suggests that we engage in acts of altruism. Though most of us may be home-bound, consider ways you can harness your skills and talents to make meaningful contributions, however small.

If you are adept at sewing, you can make masks that can be distributed to needy people.  Or, perhaps you can conduct pro-bono online cooking classes for kids to keep them engaged and occupied while their harried parents catch up on chores or work.

You may reach out to elderly family members to check if you can shop for them. Or consider making a donation to help migrant labourers who have lost their jobs.  In fact, there are opportunities aplenty at this time for you to tap into your altruistic spirit.

Avoiding judgement

Lonczak also exhorts us to avoid judging people through a negative lens. Often, we don’t fully understand the context behind a person’s compunctions. Though we may disapprove of another person’s actions in a particular situation, know that we can’t entirely predict our own reactions to the very same predicament. Instead of harping on the differences between you and the rest, trying to find similarities or areas of common ground can promote compassion.

Being grateful

Being grateful for all that is going well in your life can also make you more compassionate towards those who aren’t as fortunate. Engaging in meditation, specifically the Buddhist practice emphasizing loving-kindness, can increase the ambit of your compassion. And, most importantly, don’t forget to exercise self-compassion.

The key is to practising self-love

Often, we are harshest towards ourselves, especially when it comes to personal failings and inadequacies. But if you wish to cultivate compassion, you need to begin with yourself: stop berating and criticizing yourself. Psychologist Kristen Neff, who has studied self-compassion in depth, identifies three components on the website self-compassion.org:

1. Avoid beating yourself up

First, when we fall short, we may deny our imperfections or judge ourselves harshly. Neff exhorts us to recognise our flaws without disparaging ourselves. Treat yourself with kindness and understanding, just as you would treat a friend.

2. Accept pain as an inevitability

Second, when you suffer, know that pain is part and parcel of the human experience.  Acknowledging your common humanity with others will make you feel less alone during trying periods. Even if those around you seem better off, remind yourself that almost everyone is hit by the vicissitudes of life and your pain too shall pass.

3. Practise mindfulness

Finally, cultivate mindfulness so that you can view your thoughts and feelings from an observer’s point of view without getting unduly mired in them.

Let’s cultivate compassion and make our world richer

If we thus hone our ability to exercise compassion, the world will definitely be richer for it.  While we hope that Covid-19 is curtailed sooner than later, the pandemic has given us a chance to plumb the reservoirs of human compassion.

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There is a misconception about effective coaching that Anita’s story highlights. Too many managers believe that effective coaching is about delivering critical feedback. And while part of coaching is about critical feedback, much of it is about reinforcing what is working and providing positive feedback. This balance is essential to being an effective coach, manager and leader. Consider the following techniques to help you improve your coaching:

Provide three pieces of positive feedback for every one piece of negative feedback

Research illustrates that in high performing teams, leaders and managers give as high as five pieces of positive feedback for every one piece of negative feedback [5:1]. While that is a high bar to hit, another research studying the “weight” of negative feedback has shown that negative feedback is three times heavier than positive feedback. In other words, if you want to have your feedback bank account at baseline, you need to give at least three pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback. Otherwise you’ll be working on credit. Eventually, your direct reports will close their emotional bank account.

Give at least three pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback

Provide feedback using a “Stop, Start, Continue” framework

Most of the executive coaching action plans follow this simple format. What are you going to stop doing? What are you going to start doing? And what are you going to continue doing? This simple coaching format not only helps to organise the type of feedback you might want to provide, but it also serves as an effective forcing mechanism to ensure that positive feedback isn’t getting lost in the shuffle. It helps us to know what not to lose as we make adjustments along the way.

Get curious

Curiosity is the key not only to effective coaching, but also to healthy workplace relationships. Several years ago, I was working with the president of a financial services company. Concerned about his culture, he brought me in to assess the situation. After interviewing a large group of employees, I went back to the president to share my findings.

I started the conversation with the following, “I’m going to go over the findings item by item, but the bottom line is this: your people love you. To the person, they said how empathetic you are.” Upon hearing this, the president ruffled his brow and said something I didn’t expect, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t think I’m empathetic at all. Work is work and personal is personal. I don’t want to talk about people’s personal lives at work. In addition, this is not my family. When the workday is done, I don’t want to spend any more time with my co-workers. I want to go home to my family.”

I didn’t know what to say. This did not seem like the traits of someone as consistently described as empathetic. The two of us sat in silence for what felt like an eternity. Then the president broke the silence and said the following to me, “But there is one thing I do that I think makes all the difference. I think the greatest compliment you can give anyone is to ask him or her about the work they do. So, I’m regularly walking around the office asking employees, ‘What are you working on? How can I help you? And where do you want to go in your career and how can I help you get there?’” It hit me! Curiosity and empathy are the same thing. If we want others to view us as empathetic, find something about him or her to get curious about. It is through genuine curiosity about others that we offer the highest compliment to someone—you matter.

What can you start, stop or continue doing to give your employees more positive feedback today?

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Because it is so painful to experience the judgements of others, you would think that we would not be judgmental ourselves. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. In fact, the more we are judged, especially as children and adolescents, the more we tend to judge others too.

Criticism—a family value

I was raised in a family of people who habitually judged and criticised others. They considered themselves experts on any given subject and were the first to state their opinion, to give advice, and to tell everyone and anyone what they should do to change.

In fact, I was so judged and criticised when growing up that I learned to become an expert at it myself. I learned to judge others before they had a chance to judge me. This is a common defensive strategy that far too many of us take on.

I became the expert, the authority, the person who looked down pompously at other people. I was wiser, more capable, more ‘right’ than anyone I knew. Few people argued with me and those who did had a major fight on their hands.

I believe we were all put on this earth to learn certain lessons and we are constantly being presented with opportunities to learn our lessons. When we don’t learn our lesson in one situation we can be assured that we will be presented another opportunity to learn it—and then another and another—until we finally learn it.

One of the most important lessons we are all learning is to be less judgmental of others. It certainly has been one of my strongest lessons. I have been blessed by being forced to learn this important lesson, a lesson that has changed my life. But I haven’t learned it easily. In fact, it has been a difficult and painful lesson, one that has often felt like it was thrust upon me without my consent.

Throughout the years this lesson has gradually been getting stronger and stronger, although looking back on my life I realise it has always been a driving force. Eventually I realised the following: Each and every time I judge another person negatively, I soon find myself in their shoes, experiencing the same things they experience, and now fully able to understand their perspective.

Other reasons for being judgmental

In addition to being judged yourself, you may have other reasons why you judge others. The following exercise will help you discover these reasons:

Exercise: discover why you tend to judge others

1] Ask yourself, “What do I get out of being judgmental or critical?” Write your answers down on a piece of paper.

If you find you are stuck for answers, the following possibilities may give you some ideas. You can use them as a checklist. I judge other people because:

• It makes me feel in control
• It keeps me separate from others
• It is a way of protecting myself from pain
• It is a way of protecting myself from intimacy
• It is a way of feeling superior
• It helps me hide my feelings of insecurity
• It makes me feel powerful.

2] Notice under what conditions you tend to be the most judgmental. The next time you catch yourself feeling judgmental, ask yourself the following questions:

• What emotions am I feeling?
• How secure am I feeling? Am I feeling threatened? Criticised? Rejected?
• Are there times or circumstances when I tend to be more critical or judgmental than at other times?
• What patterns do I notice [for example, do I tend to be more judgmental or critical when I am feeling tired, hurt, threatened, angry?].

3] Pay attention to how you behave with different people and ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I tend to be judgmental/critical of some people more than others?
• Do I tend to be more judgmental when I am around certain people? For example, when I am with my old friends from school? Or when I am around judgmental people?

Choose empathy over judgement

We tend to be critical and judgmental of others because we lack empathy for their position. When we judge another person, we are, in essence, putting ourselves in a position above them. When we have empathy however, we put ourselves in their place. Judging is a position of superiority, empathy is a position of equality.

Now that you have a better understanding of the reasons why you judge, the next step to overcoming your tendency to judge others is to make a conscious decision to choose empathy over judgment. Once this decision has been made you are on your way.

Choosing empathy over judgment helps you become fuller, deeper and more compassionate. Here are some of the personal benefits of empathy:

1. Judging makes us pompous, self-righteous, hard-hearted. Empathy softens us, makes us more open-hearted and wise. Judging causes us to contract, to become small and narrow-minded. Empathy causes us to expand into becoming more broadminded and open-minded.
2. Judging blinds us to others. Empathy helps us to see others far more clearly—both their positive and negative qualities. It’s like a magic telescope that helps us to see inside the other, to view their heart and soul.
3. Judging separates us from others, while empathy connects us, helps us to see our similarities, joining us in our humanity.
4. Last but certainly not least, it is important to realise that our relationship with others mirrors our relationship with ourselves. The way we treat others is the way we treat ourselves, and vice versa. If we judge others, we judge ourselves, and if we judge ourselves, we judge others.

Judging others is a trap. It is an easy and convenient way to avoid ourselves and our own lessons. It depletes us of our energy—energy that could be better spent focussing on improving ourselves.

We lose ourselves when we are busy judging someone else. Our energy is drawn outward instead of inward, where it belongs. We stop learning about ourselves and focussing on our own lessons when we get caught up in trying to teach someone else the lessons.

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What is effective feedback?

Let’s think about feedback here as something that you say about someone else’s behaviour, including both what they said and what they did. It’s usually designed to lead to some change in their behaviour. For that feedback to be effective, it must be heard, absorbed and then acted upon.

There are whole courses devoted to giving feedback in the context of a management relationship, so why is it so hard to give effective feedback in a personal relationship? It doesn’t have to be. By adopting some simple rules, you too can give effective feedback to your partner in a way that will be easy for them to hear.

Rule 1 It’s about what you did

This is perhaps the most important rule of all in giving feedback. You need to focus on the behaviour, this means that you should not make any comment about their personality, for example, one that implies that your partner is or is not a particular type of person. It should only be about their behaviour.

Consider the difference between:

“You are a selfish horrible person” and “You are behaving like a selfish horrible person”.

Neither is exactly something that anyone wants to hear, nor would either be described as positive, or the recommended way to give feedback! But the first statement implies that there is no possible change, and you really dislike them. This is presumably not true, or they wouldn’t be your partner. You are just upset with them at the moment.

The second, on the other hand, says “I know you are a fundamentally nice person but really, what you just did was not acceptable!” It is, therefore, much easier to hear and act upon.

Rule 2 It’s about me, not you

You have no idea what your partner meant to achieve by what they said or did. All you know is the effect that it had on you. Equally, unless you tell them, your partner has no idea what effect their behaviour had on you.

Your feedback should therefore focus on what exactly they said or did, and what effect it had on you. You might say, for example,

“When you went out, and left me clearing up the other night, it made me feel taken for granted.”

“When you sent me those flowers, it made me feel really valued.”

You are not saying that your partner was right or wrong, only how it made you feel.

Rule 3 It’s very specific

The more specific you can be about the behaviour, the easier it is for your partner to change it. Suppose you say:

“Everything you have done this week has made me feel really cross.”

This makes it sound like the problem is with you, not them. Also they wouldn’t know what they could do in order to make you feel better.

Suppose instead that you say:

“It makes me cross when you leave your shoes in the middle of the floor.”

You might be having a bad week, and at any other time you could deal with the shoes. This might be the first time that you have ever mentioned this particular habit in a 10-year marriage. But right now, your partner knows exactly what to do to improve the situation.

Rule 4 It’s about what’s just happened

The best feedback is immediate, or at least broadly in the same time period. It really doesn’t help anyone if you decide to rake up things that bothered you a year or even a month ago. Focus on the most recent behaviour, and deal with what’s happening now, not what happened then. The sooner you can do it, the better. However, do consider the next rule first!

Rule 5 It’s given at the right time

We can probably all identify the wrong time: when one or both of you are stressed or angry, or when you’re tired, or hungry, or in a hurry to go somewhere else. All of these make it harder both to give calm and careful feedback, and to hear and respond to it positively.

Yes, there are times when you feel that feedback can’t wait. You really want to shout.

Don’t.

It really won’t help anyone. Count to 10, and take a deep breath to calm yourself down before you say anything. Never try to give feedback when you’re angry.

Instead, wait until you’re both more relaxed and ready to talk: at the weekend, perhaps, or in the evening. It will still be timely and recent. It’s important to make sure that you turn off the television, or ask your partner to put down their book or phone. Signal your intention, otherwise you may find that you’re repeating yourself, which is not going to be good for your calmness.

Developing a skill takes time

Finally, remember that giving effective feedback is a skill, and any skill takes time to learn and develop. You won’t become expert at giving feedback immediately. But you can immediately become better, just by following these simple rules. If you keep them in mind whenever you want to comment on your partner’s behaviour, you should soon find that communication between you has improved.

This was first published in the May 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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If you’re in a relationship with a self-loathing person, what can you do to strengthen your relationship while helping your partner—and yourself? I’ll tell you.

Understanding What Is Self-Loathing Behavior

Self-loathing people believe they are not good enough

At the most basic level, self-loathing people feel they are not good enough for their partners. To some extent, this is natural: love is often accompanied by feelings of awe and admiration, but people who don’t love themselves take these feelings too far.

A self-loather’s thought pattern is something like this: “Why should this person be with me when there are so many better people out there?” If this sounds like your partner, your first impulse is to praise them, to reassure them of their worth. While this is admirable and kind, self-loathing people are likely to dismiss or deflect such praise, feeling that they don’t deserve it. They may even interpret it as patronizing rather than sincere, if you repeat it often. It may also intimidate the self-loathing person, who may look at the praise as something they have to live up to while worrying that they can’t. This only compounds their feelings of inadequacy.

Self-loathers tend to be oversensitive to your choice of words

Self-loathing people are sensitive to wording; they are naturally disposed to take things badly, so they project their own feelings of inadequacy onto what other people say to them. This puts an extra burden on you, the partner, to be especially careful when giving criticism.

Any criticism you give is often blown out of proportion. It also reinforces your partner’s feelings of inadequacy. Furthermore, because of a lack of faith in himself or herself, your partner takes even minor criticism as a sign that you are reconsidering the relationship, and fears that every little mistake may be the last straw.

A self-loather suffers from jealousy and fear of abandonment

To make things worse, this ‘crisis of faith’ suffered by the self-loathing person may also show up in expressions of paranoid jealousy. Every person they see you talking to [especially of the opposite gender] seems better in comparison to themselves.

This makes them worry constantly that you will abandon them for somebody else. [This can be especially maddening for self-loathing people when coupled with their guilt over preventing you from meeting other people!]

It is natural for you to interpret these displays of jealousy as distrust and take it as a reflection of you. But remember, it’s more likely based on how your self-loathing partner perceives his or her low worth and value to you.

Self-loathing individuals are motivated by their own shortcomings

It is natural to think that self-loathing people are needier than most, but the truth is more complicated. Some self-loathing people seek out in their partners what they find lacking in themselves: success, good looks, intelligence, or confidence. [Ironically, this backfires as they later find themselves tortured by feelings of inadequacy when they compare themselves to the ‘superior’ partners!]

At first you may be flattered by this admiration, but over time you come to realize that your partner values you not for yourself, but rather for his or her own perceived shortcomings—and that probably isn’t what you want in the long term.

Self-loathers are reluctant to accept any help

There’s another way in which many self-loathing people do not fit the picture of the needy partner: they often reject help when it is clearly needed and sincerely offered. They are reluctant to seek out or accept help for the same reason they reject praise: they do not feel they deserve it, and they don’t want to impose on anyone else, especially you.

How to Deal With a Self-Loathing Partner

Regularly reassure your partner about what truly matters

Dealing with a self-loathing partner can be a delicate balancing act. You deserve to express your own issues and concerns, but you must also keep in mind how sensitive your partner is.  You have to assure your partner that small problems are not important in the big picture, that you both botch up from time to time—and that none of these issues signal the end of the relationship [though continued friction over them might].

Many of us desire sensitivity in a partner, of course, but dealing with extreme sensitivity can be both frustrating and exhausting, and may be more than you want—or deserve—to handle. If you’re with such a person, his or her reluctance to accept help may be especially hard on you. However, the fact that you are with such a person means that you are caring and patient. You understand who you’re with, and you naturally want to help your partner deal with his or her issues.

But the very nature of these issues causes your partner to push you away, refuse help, and possibly alienate you. Out of all the difficulties that partners of the self-loathing individuals face, this may be the most fatal to the long-term health and success of the relationship, since your essential caring nature is being denied. It’s natural to feel frustrated.

Don’t forget to prioritize self-care

While your self-loathing partner has her issues with which you naturally want to help [even if you can’t], you must not forget to take care of yourself as well. Your partner must keep in mind that, as selfless as you may seem, you also have needs that deserve to be met.

It is each partner’s choice to be in a relationship, but it is also each partner’s prerogative to end it—and you have every right to leave if you’re not getting what you need because you’re always thrust into the position of dealing with your partner’s problems.

Despite your natural kindness and patience, please keep this in mind: Don’t let your partner’s failure to love themselves make you forget to love yourself.

Last updated on 29^th March 2023

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