What is true compassion?

Compassion is usually associated with making someone feel better, helping them to stop hurting, empathizing with their feelings in a gentle way.   I would argue that this is not true compassion if it comes at the cost of the truth.  In fact, people can use this familiar definition as a reason to withhold the truth.  "I didn't want to tell him that because he'd had a bad day."  "I didn't want to hurt her feelings."  "I didn't want to bring it up then because it felt like I was being mean, like I was 'kicking the puppy'."

 

True compassion always points towards the truth rather than being motivated by not "hurting" someone's feelings. 

 

As a new therapist, now nearly thirty years ago, I was taught to "reframe" and "support" clients in whatever ways they presented and wherever they were in their lives.  Much of this early training was, in retrospect, about enabling the client to feel better about their situation rather than directly challenge the ways that they were stuck.  More often than not, this conveys the message that the client is a victim of circumstances rather than an active creator of their problems.

 

Now when I call out a client's behavior as, for example, manipulative, I do so from the most compassionate place. There are strong attachments to how we want to be perceived by the world and how we want to see ourselves in it.  This makes it enormously difficult to be open to seeing the aspects of ourselves that we don't want to admit exist.  However, it is this very reflection of truth that creates the opportunity for growth.  If I am not bringing these discrepancies to light, I am not being committed to their transformative process. 

 

There is no compassion in allowing people to hold to their own distortions or 'protecting' them from reality.  The real compassion lies in offering the truth, for the truth is the only place from which real change can occur.