The Compassionate Mind (Compassion Focused Therapy)

by Paul A. Gilbert

how would she then pay the mortgage? Like Karen, many of us are now caught up in a culture driven by the ‘business model

Cruelty flourishes because we simply turn off our capacities for compassion. When we do that we are at serious risk of losing balance and handing what is essentially an intelligent and creative mind over to protective but destructive strategies. This is what puts humans at risk, but a risk we can reduce by recognizing that care and compassion are antidotes to fear, anger and the desire to harm and so can help us.

We can also become cruel and callous to ourselves with self-criticism, self-dislike or even self-hatred (all very self-uncompassionate). We think, say things and treat ourselves in nasty ways that we’d never dream of doing to others – especially those we care about. Because we are doing it to ourselves, like bullies who have no one to stop them, we think it’s fine to behave this way and may even justify our self-unkindness.

The other problem is that targets keep moving. Those of us in employment are now given job plans and personal performance reviews that are wrapped up in the language of ‘wanting to be helpful’ but, in fact, ensure that we stay on an upward curve. So, if you meet your targets this year, you can be sure that they’ll be increased next year. Some businesses and government departments apparently believe in the concept of constant change. The idea here is that you must not let systems settle down and become organized because then people become self-satisfied and inefficient. So here in the NHS, we are constantly reorganizing – and reorganizing the reorganizing – in order to meet targets that change year on year.

Not only do these methods play havoc with our minds, morale and ability to develop cooperative working relationships (which are actually the gold dust of well-run organizations as well as of mental well-being), they are not very efficient either. Many commentators now recognize that the striving for results and the neglect of process, structure, and integrated frameworks have cost the NHS and other organizations very dearly. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re managing a football team, a company or a country – managers who are only results-focused rather than effort-and process-focused and who can’t inspire people to do their best, end up wasting money and not getting the desired outcomes. An inspired, dedicated, cooperative ‘all for one and one for all’ team of the lesser talented is likely to beat one made up of those who are more gifted but are treated as marketable objects and don’t cooperate.

It is tragic that our terror of paedophilia has led to teachers not being allowed touch or hold distressed children, and to a situation where sun cream can only be sprayed, not rubbed, on them. Such prohibitions could only have been made by people who haven’t the faintest idea of how our psychology works, what happens in our brains when we are distressed, and what we need from others by way of comfort. There is increasing evidence that young children may find nurseries more stressful than has previously been recognized, and one possible reason for this, which needs to be explored, is whether or not these children are getting enough physical affection. This is a very serious and urgent research question.

Caring experiences affect the way that emotion regulation systems are wired up for later life and how positive emotions are stimulated.19 These caring behaviours also enable children to lay down emotional memories that then become a resource for later life; they also have a profound effect on how the three emotion regulation systems are balanced. There is a now a lot of evidence that, if we experience caring in childhood, it helps us to deal with the various ups and down of life – it’s one of the things that makes us resilient to stress. Having current support and caring relationships is another, and being able to treat ourselves kindly rather than harshly is yet another.

Note as well that what the human brain will do is to put a label on each of these complex feelings. The problem is that the label might not be very accurate but only the nearest approximation of what we feel. For example, people can experience the pain of having a sense of separation from others, which might be linked to emotional memories of others not being there for them. The closest label that matches this feeling and this sense of self is: ‘I’m alone and thus unwanted.’ But the label is wrong. The reality is that perhaps the parent did love/want the child in their own limited way but was depressed and very withdrawn, and this is why those emotional memories exist within the son or daughter’s self. This is about loss and sadness, not being unwanted.