Practicing Simple Compassion

   In a class I'm taking on counseling techniques the last couple of weeks we have been practicing the skills of beginning a counseling session with a new client. The practice is also called intentional interviewing.

   The techniques are very similar to those used when simply talking to a friend: attending behavior, open ended questions, and paraphrasing/reflecting.

   Even in the five-minute “practice” sessions we do with our fellow classmates, I see that we are practicing compassion.

   It’s not so much the techniques themselves that constitute doing compassion (although they are useful tools) but what arises in the space between the interviewer and the pseudo-client.

   Each of the interviews starts out a little awkward. After all, we’re all new at this and feel a little uncomfortable in this chaotic classroom setting.

   But after the first 30 seconds or so, the real caring comes out from behind the “uneasy student” mask, and you can see the change in the dynamic between the interviewer and the interviewee.

   A simple question like: “What’s on your mind today?” leads to an outpouring of concerns, worries, or troubles.

   The student counselor recognizes suffering (the first step of compassion) and responds, “It sounds like you’re under a lot of stress, and worried too?”

   A brief flash of something like relief passes over the face of the pseudo-client. Relief that they’re being heard? That they’re not alone? That someone acknowledges their suffering?

   The back and forth continues with the student counselor asking questions, showing concern, delving into the pseudo-client’s feelings and details of the situation.

   “What could be one solution to this?” The student counselor asks. This is acting to relieve suffering, the second component of compassion.

   By listening to another’s concerns, and asking if they have any thoughts on how to move past the current blockage, they are – in essence – helping the other person look for a way out of their suffering.

   After a brief five minutes, a simple act of caring, and a few questions to elicit concerns and goals, a room full of people have practiced or received acts of compassion.

   To generalize out of the classroom, as compassionate beings it is not necessarily our job to relieve another’s suffering, but to “take action” to help relieve another’s suffering. And in the case of simple conversational compassion, just asking if the other person has thought of any solutions can be the most compassionate thing we can do.

   As we learn and develop compassion, it is a process of seeing what we already know how to do, and looking for new ways to apply those skills.

   Being compassionate isn’t something new that we’re trying to learn -- rather something that is innately part of who we are as humans. The challenge is learning how to intentionally engage that compassionate part of our being in our daily interactions with others.

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   To read more about compassion, go to: www.CompassionSpace.com.