The Neurobiology of Compassion
 |
with Paul Gilbert, PhD;
|
 |
with Paul Gilbert, PhD; Kristin Neff, PhD; Jack Kornfield, PhD; Kelly McGonigal, PhD; Christopher Germer, PhD; Dennis Tirch, PhD; Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD; Ruth Buczynski, PhD and Ashley Vigil-Otero, PsyD
Sign up for a Gold Package
But did you gain insight?
On Wednesdays I facilitate a Mindfulness group in which most of my members are transient, and therefore can’t participate in a “program”. This means that I have to find ways to make Mindfulness relevant to those who may or may not have the opportunity to follow up with additional work. I believe that much of what was presented will give me that material, and that I may even be able to entice those members to find time to return.
My mindfulness group, and indeed much of my practice is done pro-bono, so it helps that are webinars like this that permit me access without charge.
Very well organized! I am so much inspired not only to help clients exercise their compassion but to improve my studies in Compassion Focus Theraopy
The information on the areas of the brain associated with compassion was very enlightening. Also found the sections on heart breathing, the 3 circle model, and especially the ideas around self compassion in relation to trauma very helpful.
Very helpful to explain to people with attachment trauma how to get into talk about emotions from a body perspective. I can’t afford the “gold” program, but I’m grateful for this free training and would like to know how to sign up for more free training in this series, I don’t have the schedule.
Ann
Rayann802@gmail.com
I really liked the three circle model and I will definitely use this with my coaching clients. I agree that having a more thorough understanding of one’s brain (and seeing anxiety as an important part of biological evolution) can alleviate shame.
I’m so excited to start using self compassion in my sessions! The part about using it to reparent yourself is really going to be helpful. The 3 circles will help with clients who have trouble with abstract concepts. I’m linking forward to hearing more! Thank you.
Has anyone recommended that their clients walk circuits in a labyrinth as a soothing tool to improve their ability to develop compassion? I have used a 1 km natural labyrinth with considerable success to create a setting for mindfulness and a body awareness of breathing and walking to relax and to connect. Yes this compassion training resonates strongly and is very useful and integrative, Thankyou!
I like the idea of using the 3 circle model with clients as well as the mindfulness exercises. Some people will get more out of this model. As I am working mainly by telephone due to Covid, I will ask the client to draw the model for themselves. Looking forward to seeing how it goes. I have used parts of it and the explicit diagram is a good way of focusing on where we need to work together, as suggested by Dennis Tirch.
Thank you for such an informative and well-organized first session. An explanation of the various brain components was very helpful. Here are other takeaways for me: the notion that the heart can tolerate pain and incorporates courage, heart breathing, the three-circle model, the yin and yang of compassion, that the brain is wired positively to reinforce benevolence, the intertwining of polyvagal theory, parasympathetic and sympathetic systems, client examples are great!, soften (physical)/soothe (emotional)/allow (mental) – hand on heart, speaking to that emotion, etc. Some really great material here and I appreciate that you have offered all of this for free. I am definitely going to apply these ideas (and will continue to do further research) for my counselling/coaching clients (and myself!). Thank you so much, Diane
Very thought provoking and extremely interesting. Really welcomed the input from Paul Gilbert and the elaboration of the 3 circle model.
Many thanks to all involved in contributing to this first module.
Judith (from Nottingham UK)
Very interesting, I´ll buy some of the books shown in this video. Thank you so much. Greetings from Austria
Dr.Volker Edlinger
Mind awareness as an important component to mindfulness. This is the way our brain is wired, not your fault that you self-criticize and compare to others, but you can retrain your brain through self-compassion.
The three circles and ways to use help clients understand how they can better support themselves by using techniques to ctivate their own parasympathetic system
Very helpful information- 3 circles, brain information
Love the visual of the 3 circles threat, drive and soothing and the explanation of each to share with clients to increase self awareness and use some of the ways mentioned to help clients move into the soothing circle. With mindfulness and heart centered breathing, warm hand over the part of the body feeling the threat or pain and asking what you would say to your best friend, and make some space and allow the feelings you are having, but don’t immerse yourself in your suffering and practice, practice, practice to strengthen your compassion muscle
I am so grateful for this session. I’ve been applying compassion in my coaching and today, I learned the 3 circle systems which I am sure will be very helpful to explain to my clients and students. With Metta.
Love this work. The research is fascinating. Loved the explanations about the brain and how it works. The three circles and soothe and allow seems easy to use. Can’t wait to try these on with clients.
Thank you. So helpful. I’m thinking about clients who try so hard and have an underdeveloped soothing system, possibly due to frightening homes and learning insecure attachment strategies as children. Looking at the three circles with them as part of the therapy, will reduce shame and increase possibilities
Three circles! Great practical application for therapy with clients with trauma. Thank you.
Unfortunately many speakers were not sequenced and spoke at the same time. Can you fix this
Soften, soothe, Allow. Is a simple way to remember the technique.
The use of the hand over the body where you feel the emotion.
Thank you so much for these wonderful tools.
Thanks to Kelly for the description of how the ‘heart breathing’ changes the shift in our perspective. She gave me lots of motivation to work with it.
This is wonderful..It gives me some more insight into my childhood trauma and steps to take care of myself that will help me reach clients with more compassion. It also explains the addiction in my family and why I have gotten so much from Al-Anon. Thank you..
The coordination between speech and video is off. It’s distracting, but the material is very helpful.
I am so grateful for the generosity of everyone in sharing such powerful tools that I have already used immediately in my sessions! I am taking away so many insights and A- ha moments. I love the story of the zebra in helping clients understand the old brain and new brain. The Self Compassion Break tool I would like to use for a client who is struggling with anxiety as a result of strong medication side effects that is causing hair fall. This client is dealing with Lupus and is feeling extremely isolated in her suffering. The Common Humanity is a concept I would like to share with her to help her see that the existence of her suffering is there with at least one other human being. Thank you.
Great information and well presented! I have already used the heart breath for calm myself and look forward to using it with others. I would like to find out more about the UCSF research with Wang(?) and ?. Could you let me know how to find it? Thanks for your generosity in sharing this series.
I have employed the concept of the Amygdala many times and had many a light bulb moments with my clients. Now I am delighted to have the Insula, Vagus nerve and Temporal Parietal Junction to weave into my psycho-education of the client, producing an even richer mix to show how negative past experience and positive practice of self compassion can impact on our neurobiology. Particularly helpful for a current client who has used addiction and health anxiety to cope with and mask a deep past trauma. Jack Kornfield said, with the practice of compassion we can learn to ‘expand our window of tolerance.’ Due to long term PTSD my client presents as uber vigilant and finds it very difficult to live with uncertainty, so this was a very helpful prompt to include more use of self compassion in session. I loved the use of linguistics to illustrate the connection between courage (the centre of compassion) and the heart (‘coeur’) and the description of compassion as being not only nurturing and warm but fierce, protective, active, a ‘caring force.’ The three circles system was helpful (especially asking how big they are for each client). And dropping the focus out of the mind and into the body with heart breathing followed up with soften, soothe, allow could prove to be a very powerful intervention for this client as he tends to dwell headward. Finally that the brain is designed to reinforce kindness and benevolent behaviours by the use of rewards. That really took my breath away. Thank you.
I was so pleased to be able to immediately use the heart breathing technique and guided meditation (locating where in the body, touching or sending loving kindness, speaking directly to the suffering parts as we would to other loved ones), during a grief counselling session with 5 grade 5 students.Kid-friendly techniques. They found them easy to follow, effective, and made easier to talk about their feelings. Most importantly, they reported that they “felt better right away” and “less freaked out”. I was overjoyed that these techniques will now readily available to them to help them self-soothe between our meetings. Thanks for all the good information presented.
Self compassion may be an abstract concept. In mindfulness, I reach to the part that is aching and give it an age or a name. Then I reach out to that part and listen to her suffering. I make sur she knows that I am here for her, that I won’t let her down, that I love her. I am patient. She will not get in my arms immediately. usually I have a little live animal in my arms. She will approach. And I let her be. I make sure she knows that for me she exists. I listen to her movements. Sometimes she will sit besides me. And I take my time.
QUESTION: Not only am I interested in sharing this research on The Neurobiology of Compassion with other practitioners, how do I get my state (California) to adopt this concept and include it in all sectors of the community and across all life spans?
In addition to the following Departments: Mental Health, Health, Public Health, Social Services, I can see this concept beneficial in all types of schools and programs: Child Care, Head Start, Preschool, K-12, Public, Private, Clergy, Universities, Community Colleges, Alternative Schools, Justice Involved, Vocational Training, Specialized Trainings, After-School Programs, Sports Programs, Senior Centers, Teen Parenting, Domestic Violence, YWCA, YMCA, DOR, etc.
I think this understanding of compassion is a key component of a client’s attachment to her father, in that she felt enormous pain seeing him suffer. The release of the reward,pleasure, and caretaking/bonding hormones when you move toward someone to help them, could make a child seek that even more, even when her father is molesting her. She has been so rejecting of her own compassion, and we think it’s because her compassion toward her father made it very easy for him to abuse her. She believes it was her compassion that led her into danger and wants nothing to do with it now. Seeing the Threat Circle will be helpful for her. Thank you.
WOW!!!? Much Thanks!!! You all made this subject easy to follow along and understand. Now, it makes sense to me why my former clinician was trying to convey the importance of calming the parasympathetic system. She even prescribed deep breathing as a form of treatment to help me take time for self-care. But of course, when time with one’s clinician is limited to only 15-minutes and visits are scheduled on a quarterly basis (due to a high population demand) how much information can reasonably be expected to be absorbed during one’s visit?
On another note, I wished I had written down the connection between compassion, shame, resistance and making space for the ill feelings. I loved how it was stated. I need to repeat it so I can make sense of these concepts. I mean it’s a paradigm shift that requires time. I had an “Aha” moment.?
It was great to hear the case examples of how the three circles can help to increase client’s mind awareness. I will use this as a stepping stone to introduce compassion based practices to activate the soothing system.
I love the Soften Soothe Allow exercise from the MSC course. It has helped me through many difficult emotions. I have used this in my clinical work similar to how Chris described it, and clients always walk away feeling more content.
Oh!yeah, that! liberation from pressure to immediately find words or to try to out-think all aspects of a “problem”. Let’s drop down in to a bodily awareness. Trust inner witness that it is safe and healthy to do so.
I am interested in becoming a mediator for community, maybe even court of law. I want to bring as much emotional intelligence to the meeting as possible in a rational, results-driven context.
Aha why do some of us humans actually resist soft/ soothe/ allow?
What is this insecure attachment phenomenon? Thanks for getting me asking!
1.Heart Breathing–Imagining the heart having nostrils, imagining the heart breathing in and out, to drop awareness from head to body.
2. Soften the body. Soothe the emotion (What would you say to a friend?). Allow the emotion(Give yourself space to be a human and have the full range of emotions)
3. —That we learn self-soothing by **first receiving it**. For my clients that were rejected by their families of origin, I may be the person that first gives them soothing, for them to learn how to give soothing to themselves. They can’t jump from never having been soothed, to being able to independently soothe themselves.
I liked the 3 circle of emotional regulation as a visual tool to use with my clients. Appreciated also the neurobiology of compasion
It was wonderful to see Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff again. Their curriculum in Mindful Self-Compassion has changed my life and many client’s lives. I also enjoyed Emiliana Simon-Thomas’ neurobiological descriptions of compassion and will incorporate this with polyvagal theory. Thank you.
Today’s session has taught me how to simply teach a client how to allow emotions to soften in the body. Through regular practice, I believe this will empower the client to become more resilent in times of difficulties.
Thanks guys. The 3 circle model is intuitive and immediately useful. A wonderful person centre therapeutic approach grounded in sound neuropsychological evidence. Love it.
Wow! Another amazing presentation. All the ingredients that have worked in my own recovery from C-PTSD, and presented in such a way that is so easy to understand. I look forward to getting this series and utilizing it in my upcoming practice as a new clinician. I’m currently a graduate student changing careers mid-life in order to give back what I’ve received from my own healing. This is exactly what I need to help myself apply what I have learned from my own therapy.
I appreciated Dr. McGonigal’s “Heart Breathing” technique to take awareness of self from the head to the heart and open myself and my clients up to a more calm and compassionate vagal state.
I really liked the introduction to using the 3 circles (systems) in therapy. I run a PTSD group and want to use this with them. Can you provide a slide with the 3 circles?
Great to have revisited the three circles and connect it up with soften/soothe/allow. Thank you so much.
Self-compassion is a change process
Two things I realized: it provides a frame for understanding what the clients are dealing with and what is happening with their bodies—absorbing how to shift is another matter AND I realize that what has been remarked as my resilience in what has happened to me and my loved ones and the health at my age that my physician considers remarkable (my “ age is not my chronological age”) is probably due to all three of my professions’ calling for compassion and having raised animals—not the biological health of my chronically ill parents.
I will use the 3 circle systems of emotional regulation in sessions with clients to help them increase awareness of themselves and identify what may be getting in their way of a more calm life. I will enhance what I utilize now with the Soften, Soothe and Allowing technique and so much more. Very helpful, thank you!