Lack of compassion

During CBT my therapist has asked me to consider being compassionate to myself. Self compassion is something I have heard about and I am keen to explore.

However, it's made me realise just how little compassion I've had.

My father had Borderline personality disorder and my childhood was hyper critical and there was not much love - it was all about surviving my father's moods. However, since we left home and my mum left him, the void hasn't been filled.

I have only just realised how little compassion and consideration I get from my mum. I always still seem to not get things right or get things wrong. Even at difficult times I can't remember her putting her arms around me and saying everything is okay.

I've come to terms with how my father treated me. But I'm only just realising the damage my mum has caused me with the lack of compassion and I'm finding that very hard to deal with.

Anyone else feel that they lacked compassion?

Any tips how to recognise and feel compassion from those around you?

Any tips on how to build self compassion?

Any tips on dealing with that horrible feeling when someone isn't compassionate (mean/selfish/hurtful)? How can I stop that hurt feeling damaging me more?

When there is a total lack of compassion how do you stop yourself feeling totally unloved and totally unloveable?

SB

I think we had similar childhoods. I don't know if your mom did this too, but my mom would get pushed into siding with my father which made me even more self critical. It is hard to not start self blaming when you are the family scapegoat. I am finding that I have to remind myself to have self compassion. In my meditations, I will repeat often repeat the phrase " love yourself, because you are worth it".

If it is lack of compassion in an ongoing relationship, then I would limit or end contact. However, if it is in one off situations, then I just label it as an issue with the other person, and move on. I think focusing on the lack of compassion will just lead to more self shaming.

-- Thu May 19, 2016 3:31 pm --

I think we had similar childhoods. I don't know if your mom did this too, but my mom would get pushed into siding with my father which made me even more self critical. It is hard to not start self blaming when you are the family scapegoat. I am finding that I have to remind myself to have self compassion. In my meditations, I will repeat often repeat the phrase " love yourself, because you are worth it".

If it is lack of compassion in an ongoing relationship, then I would limit or end contact. However, if it is in one off situations, then I just label it as an issue with the other person, and move on. I think focusing on the lack of compassion will just lead to more self shaming.

That makes three of us then. My dad was hypercritical (OCPD traits) and my mum was the one with unstable moods.

I was reading another forum and someone posted a thank you for the support and compassion she had received, and for some reason I just started crying when I read the word compassion. I was never shown any by my parents and I can't even be compassionate towards myself. My therapist says that's because of the lack of it from my parents. I simply never learnt about it.

There are various reasons that someone might be uncompassionate towards you:
- They don't realise how upset you are
- They can't understand why you're upset (not from the same background as us)
- They don't know how to deal with other people's emotions
- They weren't taught about compassion themselves
- They are just a selfish person who can't be counted upon

All reasons that reflect on them, not you. Try moving the focus of the hurt from "I'm unlovable and it hurts" to "I feel hurt because I have a need that isn't being met right now". Then the next step is self-care and self-soothing to try to meet the need.

It's all easier said than done

Hello.

Same thing basically happened to me. My father was the neglectful, absent and abusive figure and my mother was scared of him so she kind of sided with him out of fear. From school to my home, I was rejected. Punished at home too because my father didn't want to bother raising his kids so he came up with all sorts of excuses to keep us away from him, including hanging out in rooms and items that we weren't allowed to touch due to being "grounded" (TV, computer, etc). All of this lead to a lot of crap, of course.

Self-compassion might be the first step towards self-esteem, or perhaps it is the same. It can be difficult to acquire when you have a hard time sorting out between your self-hatred, self doubt and all sorts of other things. It makes you wish that you had others to tell you that the things that happened to you are unfair and that you are right to feel and be the way you are...but it's still difficult. No one can really be in your shoes and unless you can untangle the mess yourself, you end up wanting to be reassured by others because you have no confidence in your opinion that what happened was cruel and undeserved and that you should treat yourself with kindness as a result.

There are some people that seem to have a hard time showing and dealing with emotions. My mother's an example of that. Not much in terms of physical comfort or reassurance. There might be several reasons to that, like Penny said. I think a lot of people don't really know how to deal with hypersensitive people though. They might not understand why you are feeling bad and how to deal with the intense emotions, or they might not even be aware of all of this or the fact that some of the emotional flare ups are due to psychological damage.

There's always an explanation as to why certain people can't properly find solutions to this kind of issue. Unfortunately, we are all human and sometimes, some people lose perspective and also get lost in their own emotions. There's a lot of psychological damage suffered from a lot of people, from us here to people with depression, anxiety, other PD's, etc. and they are sometimes caused by a combination of abuse and what we're talking about. The problem is that it is very hard separate all of those elements from the self-hatred, doubt and toxic inner dialogue.

The ideal would be to realize that there are a lot of things that can cause some people that were supposed to care for us to not be up to the task. That's one thing, but there are a lot more obstacles, including anger, and a feeling of injustice.

Self-compassion is probably a way to try and go through all of those feelings as well as realizing that we shouldn't be blaming ourselves, even if it's against our innermost, dysfunctional beliefs, that we were at fault.

Easier written than done.

I believe it's normal for avoidants to lack compassion, so please don't beat yourself up over it.

Compassion arises when we feel good and we can share that good with others. Who of us feels good in our endless self-deprecating cycle?

Don't force yourself to feel artificial compassion, it will come on its own if your life gets better.

For me it was a big discovery to realize that I hate myself. I always assumed that everybody loves themselves, care for themselves. But we avoidants don't, we think we're worse than others. Tell me how can a person who doesn't love herself love others?

My advice is take it easy. Don't try to force anything just b\c you once again think you're a "bad person" unless you feel so and so. We're like paupers who don't have money, how can we share that money with others? But there's no shame in being as we are.

FragranceOfLilac wrote:I believe it's normal for avoidants to lack compassion.

I completely utterly disagree. I think you misread (or didn't read) the original post.

On the contrary, I think avoidant people are more aware of other's suffering than the general public, and they beat themselves up more than other folks for not being able to do more to help.

inverse wrote:On the contrary, I think avoidant people are more aware of other's suffering than the general public, and they beat themselves up more than other folks for not being able to do more to help.

Yes. But in my case, I do it out of desire to be liked and accepted, not out of genuine compassion.

It took me months of therapy to realize this. Of course, there are moments of real compassion, but mostly my soul is such a dark place that there's nothing to share with others. I hope for that to change.

If you have an aspect of your personality, or are going through something in your life, don't attribute it to all people with AvPD. It's confusing and offensive and narcissistic. Instead of hiding behind a label and saying your quirk is "normal for avoidants" (especially when it's so clearly not true) own up to what you're saying. In this case, you lack compassion, so say that you lack compassion. The next time something comes along, speak about your experience. Say the word "I" rather than insisting (incorrectly) that it is an aspect of AvPD. You can look at the stickied posts if you need a refresher on what constitutes avoidance vs depression vs anything else.

Who doesn't do it because they want to be liked and accepted? Your therapist maybe? I seriously doubt it.

TawtStrat wrote:Who doesn't do it because they want to be liked and accepted? Your therapist maybe? I seriously doubt it.

I think she tried to tell me the same thing as you, actually. But I still drew my own conclusions.

Isn't there something fake about being nice only to be accepted? I think that maybe for some people it's not the primary reason to show compassion. Maybe they just want to share how good they feel inside with others. It would be sad if everyone kind acted kind just out of fear to be rejected.