Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek and today we are working with our element of compassion. I'm excited about this. We are going to explore, roughly,something called the five levels of compassion. Okay. And we'll do it over the next handful of episodes, but before we even kind of get into that, Let's get an understanding of compassion.
All right, the most basic sort of understanding of compassion is a simple [00:01:00] breakdown of its Latin roots. We've got passion or patior, which means to suffer or endure. And so when we talk about having passion, actually, it really means this active nature. I think of sustaining, to live through what is difficult.
I like that. and then "com", that prefix in compassion means "with." So compassion means to suffer with, to suffer with others, suffer with ourselves, to acknowledge suffering around us and within us. I want to also differentiate quickly between pain and suffering, before we get into the levels of compassion, because this is really important.
I, this helped me a lot. Just this, just this differentiation. So Henry, maybe you can dive into this more, but for me, a quick difference I like to think about is that pain is what happens, like the stimulus and the immediate response of discomfort that we have to it. Additionally, pain is [00:02:00] inevitable in life.
Much of it is unavoidable. Suffering, on the other hand, is really what happens next. After that pain. What happens within us after that pain? It's usually a negative story that we interpret, we write, and then we rewrite about the pain that then really causes that suffering.
Henry: Yeah, well, I, I really like how you described it, Aimee. I think pain is that discomfort that comes from just those unavoidable slings and arrows of life. And when we're talking about emotional pain, it's usually something that makes us feel hurt or sad, or that we've lost something that's important to us or someone. And of course those things happen to all of us. Pain is like getting stung by a hornet. So this is my very recent example because this happened to me just the other day. It hurts like [00:03:00] crazy at first, but then, that hurt will gradually go away. That's like the unavoidable thing.
If you walk too close to a hornet's nest, you are going to get stung and it is going to hurt. Trust me. But then, imagine that I had some sort of allergic reaction to it. I didn't, but this happens.Where I got really swollen up, where the sting happened, or I got an infection or something, that's kind of analogous to when we pile suffering on top of pain. So, I can't really help it if I have an allergic reaction, that's just how my body works, but the same thing is true for emotions, if we overreact to something at that moment, we can't help that we're doing it. We're just, that's just what we do. However, we can learn gradually not to have such a reaction. Just [00:04:00] like if I had that physical reaction to something, I could take allergy shots, and gradually over time, I'm going to react to it less and less.
And that's kind of how I like to think aboutyou know, applying self compassion to ourselves. We're giving us these little, little shots that, are just really helpful at toning down our system, gradually teaching our mind not to react so strongly and make things worse in the process.
Aimee: I love that metaphor. It was great.
Henry: it just came to me, Aimee, in the form of a flying, horrible, attacking little, little insect.
Aimee: Yeah. I like that example though, too, because when we think about avoidable and unavoidable, I mean, kind of, like, that was maybe avoidable, Henry, if you knew the hornet
Henry: It wasn't, Aimee. It was not a
Aimee: nevermind. I won't go down that path of what we think is avoidable, what we don't think is avoidable. [00:05:00] It's a whole other conversation.
So, okay, I'll, I'll twist this. How can we be hornets of compassion, right? I don't think I worked the metaphor right. How can we be the EpiPen for suffering?
Does that work? I don't know. All right. Okay, one way, let's, let's get into this is to join us absolutely for the Joy Lab program, where we focus a lot on this type of self-compassion work; in our experiments, and getting out of those stuck patterns of suffering, those little shots of self compassion.
We do a lot of that. Today on the podcast and over the next several episodes, as I noted, we will do that work as well. We're going to work off of Dr. Gabor Maté's, five levels of compassion to build up our understanding of compassion and help us get some doses, with some really practical actions.
And we are, we are just using Dr. Maté's,levels of compassion as like a springboard. So don't [00:06:00] tell him what we're saying because he might disagree. We're just, we're using it as inspiration. I don't know if he'll agree with what we're talking about here, but I think it's really helpful. So here they are.
Here's these five levels of compassion. The first one, ordinary human compassion. Second, the compassion of understanding. Then we have the compassion of recognition. Fourth, the compassion of truth. And the final one is the compassion of possibility. So Mate describes these as a way, again, of kind of defining compassion in its full sense, that these are the elements, needed to build compassion as, well, and they kind of, it is really pretty linear as well, right?
So they build from this more simple, autonomic kind of function of our being, this human, this ordinary human compassion, to more complex. And then, those might be the things we need to practice [00:07:00] more. Again, if you're in the Joy Lab Program, you'll see these show up, not laid out specifically in this way or with these terms, but you'll see these levels show up within your experiments.
So we're going to do, ordinary human compassion today, and then we'll do the rest of those levels in each of the next following episodes. Okay. Before we dive into ordinary human compassion,
let's highlight why this matters because compassion might not seem like it's a necessity for wellbeing, or an important aspect of our individual mental health, particularly when U. S. culture and media doesn't really spotlight it. Henry, do you want to touch on that? Why compassion matters?
Why we should spend our time on this stuff?
Henry: Yeah, but first I just want to say I love these five levels of compassion, and I also love that the first one is called ordinary human compassion. So I like it [00:08:00] because I don't see it as ordinary at all. To me, anyone who becomes really skilled at compassion, and it is a skill, right;anyone who becomes skilled at it is actually an extraordinary human being. I just see it as such a high level skill and such a helpful, helpful one. So I am also really excited to dig into these five levels and get to the nuances of compassion. We recently talked about kindness as a form of love. And I think of compassion as the element that gives rise to these things, both kindness and love.
It's like it, it breathes life into us. It enables, enables us to live in a fuller and more loving way. So, if kindness is love in action, which is I think a nice way to think of it, compassion is [00:09:00] the, it's the foundation for it. It's like the prerequisite, like taking an introductory course before you move on to a more advanced class. So, as you already know, Aimee, I, years ago, I taught a class for folks with depression and we touched upon everything we could think of that might be helpful from diet to exercise to mindfulness skills. But after years of doing this and seeing people get better and actually almost everyone improved at least somewhat, but the people who really improved, who, who turned kind of the corner on this thing we, we call and think of as depression. I think there were two things that really jumped out at me that made the difference for those folks. And one of them was to create deeper connections, which we also talk about in Joy Lab. And then the other was to embrace [00:10:00] self compassion.
Aimee: Hmm. Those are both compassion in my book too. Like how do you develop deeper connections? Right.
You demonstrate compassion, gah, so let's just soak in that. The power of compassion. And the research would support what you just said as well, Henry. Self compassion, compassion is powerful. So let's get into that 1st level of compassion, suggested by
Dr. Maté: ordinary human compassion. This level is really, just that acknowledgement that someone or ourselves are suffering. We don't want that and we feel bad about it. We wish it were different. And in some cases that can be enough motivation for us to take some kind of compassionate action, to offer help or support.
And as we'll get into in the next several episodes, I think there's more to consider with compassion, which means [00:11:00] as we practice it more and explore these aspects of it, like these five levels we're digging into and more, this is not, just, the five only, then we can take compassionate actions that are really supportive for others and ourselves, rather than maybe a more reactive, but compassionate response to just make a bad feeling go away.
So, that's this base level of compassion. And I, I like that he uses the term ordinary I like how it's in this very, base understanding of what compassion is this kind of acknowledgement and kindness, it's just ordinary. We are wired for it.And it is a high level skill, as you said, Henry, and we may need to change some fuses because we've gotten out of practice or haven't had the modeling we could have had growing up, but it is just really basic. Compassion is an evolutionary advantage. I want to talk about that just a little bit.
We've talked about this [00:12:00] in the past. I'll try to find the episode that we did this on, this idea, right? Survival of the fittest. It really means survival of the kindest or most compassionate. That's what Darwin really interpreted.So let me, one more thing, right? Survival of the fittest was not a phrase coined by Darwin.
I think it's important to note that as well. It was instead Herbert Spencer. He was a moral philosopher of the late 19th century who used the term after completely missing the point of Darwin's natural selection work. Just went over his head quite honestly. It was not survival of the fittest. It was the species that demonstrated flexibility and cooperation,
The ones with the desire to support one another, those would make up the individuals and the collections of creatures who lived on to reproduce. That's what Darwin said. That is survival of the kindest.
Henry: I like where you're going with this, [00:13:00] Aimee. I hadn't really thought of it quite in this way as a means of evolution, but I think it makes total sense.
Aimee: absolutely.
Henry: We all know, right, that we have evolved to have this strong fear response when we feel threatened. You might call it a stress response. And that, that fear response might actually save us in the moment. If our lives are actually in danger, it helps promote survival in that way. But it is very self focused. When you're really stressed, you get blinders on, right? All you can see is just what's right in front of you. What's, it's one of the things that makes it so hard to take wise action when we're stressed because we get this, this, self, focused blinder, kind of approach. But this is something that all animals, including reptiles, maybe all living creatures have in common. You have to get away from something dangerous in order to live another day. But the [00:14:00] compassion response is something really different. It's not just about surviving in the moment, it's just more enduring than that. I think it helps us build something for the future. It helps ensure our long term survival and and even helps ensure the survival of generations to come. It is not me focused. It is It is you. we focused..
we focused
Aimee: Right.
Henry: And it's not just about stepping out of the way to survive a threat. It's, it's more about kind of building a web of protection, a whole community that can soften all of our suffering because we don't have to endure it all by ourselves. So even if we just apply this to ourselves as individuals, the compassion response is like a really helpful counterbalance to the fear response.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: Much
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: of the fear that we hold today is [00:15:00] unnecessary. It's an overreaction, often to something that isn't even real, but that we just made up in our own minds. Now, we're still going to have a fear reaction if we do that, because that's simply how we're wired. But if we can learn to direct a little compassion toward that reaction,if we can see when we're doing this in the moment and just say to ourselves, "Oh, gosh. This is really, this is really painful.
This, this is such a hard way to experience this. It's going to be okay." Something to that effect. It just softens it. It tells our autonomic nervous system, it's okay to stand down.I think of it like, uh, this is what a loving parent does to soothe a frightened child. They're not going to blame the child for getting scared. They're going to comfort and calm them [00:16:00] through compassionate words and touch. And that's what works.
Aimee: Yeah. I think you're, I think you're highlighting what Spencer missed, right? It's what we all miss when the sole focus is individuality or Survivability, that's a word, right? Survivability. Yeah.
Henry: It is now.
Aimee: Right? So just like you're saying, just dodging danger, just trying to outpower fear or something, always on the defense, that survival instinct is not the same as living. Like really living, connecting, growing, reproducing, if Darwin was taking notes. I, I think that's really important, Henry, and it's okay to stand down, like you just said.
It's not just okay, actually, it's necessary to really tap into our true nature. Like we have to stand down. [00:17:00] Okay, so we could get into this all day, but let's, let's take the idea of ordinary compassion and bring it into action,with again, the reminder that this is really hardwired stuff. That is also extraordinary, as you suggested, Henry, it's powerful.
It takes practice, but it is also just who we are. Those two things are, are both true. We are absolutely wired for this and it is extraordinary. So let's stick with simplicity. And really just a nice link from your note on calming the stress response, henry. So we can practice something called supportive touch.
Dr. Kristin Neff, a very well renowned self compassion researcher, she does great work. I'll link to her website. She talks a lot about this. So the simplest way to do this is to this, supportive touch is to just stack your hands over the [00:18:00] center of your chest, perhaps, or belly, or even the sides of your face can be very comforting, like Home Alone style.
so much wisdom in that movie. And just press into your body.give a little, give a little press, a loving press.I like sort of those three areas in particular, but you could press onto your legs or your arms, whatever feels good for you and tune in what does feel good for you. And then just take some deep breaths in and out.
Maybe 5 cycles of breaths. That's it. This practice can help activate our parasympathetic system, right? Our tend and befriend response, this compassion wiring, which is the opposite of our fear response as we're sort of getting into here. We can stand down. We get some oxytocin flowing. That's the love hormone, sometimes called the love hormone.
More good [00:19:00] mood chemicals show up like serotonin and dopamine just by doing this. Our cardiovascular stress calms, very simple. So that is a self-compassion practice that works. Give it a try. Henry, do you want to offer up any others?
Henry: Sure. I'm going to highlight a very common example that I think most of us can relate to because I just recently came across research on this that I thought was really interesting. So see if you can relate to this. You're at a social function. Maybe it's just with one friend, or you're in a group, or it's a big gathering, it doesn't matter, it's kind of the same. But during the course of the get together, you say something that you just wish you hadn't said. And you think, "Oh, God, that sounded stupid," or "I bet they didn't like what I said, I offended them in some way,"
or, all have been there, [00:20:00] right? So, you leave the gathering feeling bad. Maybe you might have just kind of ruined your the entire evening. And then, you might even lay awake that night, middle of the night, ruminating about it. Why did I say that? And this can go on for a day or two anyway, right?
Aimee: Longer.
Henry: Yeah,
Aimee: I have
had those thoughts many months later. Yeah.
Henry: yeah. So, apparently, this is an incredibly common human experience to overthink and feel badly about something we said in a social setting. This is super, super common. But here's the interesting thing that the research showed, and that is that almost always, nearly 100 percent of the time, the people that you were talking to don't remember it or just didn't think much of it. It just didn't register with them or they didn't, they didn't [00:21:00] think it was a big deal. Maybe they just forgot it and moved on to other topics, whatever. It's not anywhere near the big deal that it is to you. You remember it because you've been rehearsing it for hours or days, but they have not. So we think that what we said is a much bigger deal than anybody else does. So, how do we practice self compassion with that? So, here are two levels I can think of to consider. First, just remind yourself that even though you might think this is a big deal, it wasn't. There's a 99 percent or better chance that no one else really thought that much about it. So cut yourself some slack. Second, going a little deeper, but I still think this is really simple. You can just notice how you react emotionally to having said this. Now this is actually [00:22:00] very easy to do. All you need to do is just tune in to the midsection of your body while you're thinking about this. Somewhere between the throat and the groin.
Just ask yourself. What am I feeling now? And it is probably some kind of at least mildly painful emotion, and you don't even have to be any more specific than that. To be self-compassionate, you can just sit with it for a while. You don't have to do anything else. Just know that at this moment, this kind of hurts, but that it's going to pass. If you can just feel it without thinking very much about it, you are going to notice within a short time it begins to subside in real time right as you're paying your paying attention to it. Then if you find yourself ruminating about what you said at 3 in the morning, do [00:23:00] exactly what Aimee just suggested.
Lay on your back, fold your hands, place them over your chest or your belly, and just let yourself feel the warmth and that gentle sense of pressure. Because when you do that, it helps take you out of thinking mode.
Aimee: I love that. I'm coming back to our murder Hornets conversation and I'm thinking, yeah, like that sting is, it is so often, you just said the research on this, everybody does this, right? Something happens in a social setting, you're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I said that." Sting, right? The hornet has just stung you.
Unavoidable. We can work on thoughts. We do that in Joy Lab, but that's not necessarily the problem. It's what happens after that period. And I love this example, Henry. I think this is so good because here are some great strategies that we can, yeah, touch the pain and [00:24:00] then avoid or ease the suffering.
I love that.
I'm going to do this because that is something I struggle with. so I hope this is helpful for you all listening as well. Um, so we've gotten into this ordinary human compassion,for all of us extraordinary humans. Yes, I'm talking to you, extraordinary human listening. Let's soak in that. We have a superpower of compassion. And an ordinary functioning of compassion.
And next episode, we'll get into the second level of Maté's framework, which is the compassion of understanding. So until then. I'll leave us with a quote to soak in some wisdom from a scientist, Dr. George Washington Carver. He lays compassion out really simply, I think, and purely. Like why it's part of our fabric.
So here it is. " How far you go in life [00:25:00] depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these."
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