Compassion and Empathy
I recently had the opportunity to lead a discussion during the Festival
of Empathy on ‘compassion and empathy’ with a focus on older people in our
different faith communities. I found it
helpful to consider the definitions and chose the following:
Compassion
– a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by
misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.
Empathy
– the ability to understand and share
the feelings of another (as in eg, authors have the skill to make you feel
empathy with their heroines), whereas sympathy means ‘feelings of pity and
sorrow for someone else’s misfortune (as in eg, they had great sympathy for the
flood victims).
All our major religions have compassion
as a core virtue:
·
Hindu –
compassion is the core virtue in its philosophy
·
Judaism – God is
the compassionate
·
Christianity –
Jesus Christ the Father of Compassion
·
Islam – Allah the
Compassionate
Accompanied by the Golden Rule “do to
others what you would want them to do to you”.
Currently the new National Care
Standards for health and social care in Scotland are being developed at the
heart of which are five core principles:
- Dignity and respect
- COMPASSION
- Be included
- Responsive care and support
- Well-being
We discussed a range of questions which
included:
·
Is being kind and
helpful the same as being compassionate?
·
Can you teach
compassion?
·
What do you
understand by compassion fatigue?
·
What can we do to
prevent such fatigue?
What do you think?
Maureen O’Neill
21 June 2016
