Given that adversity is linked with anxiety and depression, why does compassion ever emerge from it?
.. The reason, we suspect, is that compassion isn’t as purely selfless as it might seem. While it might appear to be a response to the suffering of others, it is also a strategy for regaining your own footing — for resilience in the face of trauma. After all, having strong social relationships is one of the best predictors of psychological well-being in the long run, and so anything that enhances your bonds with others — like expressing compassion for them — makes you more resilient.
.. In an article recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Kellogg School of Management professor Loran Nordgren and colleagues found that the human mind has a bit of a perverse glitch when it comes to remembering its own past hardships: It regularly makes them appear to be less distressing than they actually were.
As a result of this glitch, reflecting on your own past experience with a specific misfortune will very likely cause you to underappreciate just how trying that exact challenge can be for someone else (or was, in fact, for you at the time). You overcame it, you think; so should he. The result? You lack compassion.
.. Those who had overcome more severe bullying felt less — not more — compassion for current bullying victims. Likewise, those who had faced greater difficulty with unemployment had less sympathy for the currently jobless. When the adversities didn’t match, no such empathy gap emerged.