COMPASSION AND

SUFFERING
DR.SHIVANI BHAMBRI
• People who experience more severe adversity are more empathic,
leading to greater compassion and a higher likelihood of taking action
to relieve the suffering of others.
• Compassion involves affective, cognitive, as well as motivational
responses to suffering, where the person who witnesses suffering feels
a sense of caring for and wanting to help others experiencing
suffering.
• Suffering can make us more resilient, better able to endure hardships.
Just as a muscle, in order to build up, must endure some pain, so our
emotions must endure pain in order to strengthen.
• Compassion is the joining in others’ suffering, irrespective of their
social or personal identity. It is the perspective that in any person’s
suffering there is a common humanity – the recognition that no matter
a person’s cultural background, sexual orientation or age, you are like
the other person in that moment.
• Compassionate leaders work to lift themselves above their
unconscious biases to see all people in the organization with similar
worth. In doing so, leaders encourage attitudes of virtue and
altruism throughout the organization, for all people.
• Compassion is more constructive. It starts with empathy and then turns
outward, with an intent to help. With compassion, leaders make the
conscious choice to turn emotion into action. And in doing so,
compassionate leaders are perceived as stronger and more competent,
able to make decisions and get things done.
• Compassion in an organization triggers other positive outcomes:
improved collaboration, trust and team loyalty.
• Because compassion is intentional and solution-focused
• Centered on how to help another person while actively considering the
various trade-offs. And, when we deliver that help, we get the bonus of
a dopamine hit. Helping feels good, and we are motivated to do it
again in the future. Compassion makes us more generous.
• Compassion is considered the reflective and deliberate part of our
psychology which originates in the cognitive centers of the brain.
Compassionate feelings, thoughts, and decisions pass through filters of
consciousness, which means we can deliberate, reflect and improve on
the decisions.