The most commonly accepted components of compassion are:
An emotional response (concern)
A cognitive response (perception of suffering)
A motivational response (desire to see suffering relieved)
Empathy generally precedes compassion. It is the ability to understand what the other person is feeling, see things from their point of view and perhaps even see yourself in their situation without necessarily desiring to do something about it. Functional MRI’s have demonstrated that when you have empathy it activates the pain centre in the brain “feel your pain” When you take action it activates a different part of your brain – reward centre. Empathy hurts – compassion heals. It is the motivation to go beyond merely empathizing and see the pain diminished or the suffering relieved that distinguishes compassion from empathy. As one writer put it “empathy hurts - compassion heals”.

In 2018 Drs. Steve Trezciak and Anthony Mazzarelli published Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference, a book based on their two-year journey utilizing biomedical evidence in which they conducted the largest systematic review of the literature related to acts of compassion in healthcare. Their research showed that compassion has a direct, undeniable impact on health outcomes of patients, burnout in practitioners and cost reduction in health care systems.

Compassion is a skill and not a trait. For most of us it can be taught. It’s good for both our physical and mental health. Helping others feels good, contributes to our happiness and sense of purpose and meaning in life.

Join us as we explore compassion with Dr. Francis Scully, professor, researcher and founder of BeCompassionateNL. We’ll examine the nature of compassion, our ability to learn how to be more compassionate, its potential impacts on our personal health and how we can build more compassionate communities.