Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek. And today we are working with our element of compassion. And the final level of Dr. Gabor Maté's Five Levels of Compassion, that framework he's presented. So again, this is the last one, and this is the Compassion of Possibility. First, I want to note, if you've listened to one of the last several episodes, you'll know we are using these levels to get the convo started, around compassion, [00:01:00] explore it a bit more. We're taking the Joy Lab twist on it. So if you're in the program, you'll probably realize that these levels show up in your experiments as well.And we are going in order. There's a bit of a linear nature to these, you can stay right here. If you haven't listened to the other ones yet, you can go back later.
Aimee: That's fine. So let's get into this, the compassion of possibility, the fifth and final level proposed by Maté. I love this. Maté describes this as our ability to look beyond the suffering of dysfunction.To see beyond what is dark and see what is good and right, with someone or ourselves. You brought this up last episode, Henry, or a couple of episodes ago. So you and Maté are definitely on the same wave here, I think. I'll give an example of this compassion of possibility. Taking the same example from one of our earlier episodes on these levels. So if [00:02:00] you're experiencing depression and feeling really stuck, you're suffering. That's how it feels, right? Can you see more than just that in yourself? See more than just the perceived dysfunction? See beyond the manifestations of your suffering? Can you see what's right and what's possible as well? Can you see that the suffering is not permanent? Because all of that is true too. We've gotten into all of that in the last several episodes. So this level of compassion reminds us that we are still good. We are not broken. We are more than just one thing. One diagnosis, one screw up, one mess up, whatever it might be. That is not who we are. We are so much more. And the compassion of possibility is this very active practice of seeing that. Working to see the truth, which is [00:03:00] good. What's coming next? What do you wanna add here to explain this, if at all, Henry?
Henry: I'm thinking of a couple of things. Um,in an earlier episode, I talked about Parker Palmer, who was an author and speaker who has been very open about sharing his own journey with depression. And one of the reasons his story is so compelling to me is that even though he's had several bouts of really disabling depression, that is so clearly just a tiny fraction of who he is.
Henry: Because when he is not depressed, if you met him, Parker is so full of life. He is so fun, so generous, kind, compassionate, you name it. And he's just contributed so much to the world through his writing and speaking. To me, it's just a lesson. And to all of us, I think, to anyone who has had depression, you do not need to be defined by it. The second thing that comes to mind is I am thinking of a [00:04:00] client that I saw— it's been a few years ago now, but it was just a striking encounter—that this was with a woman who was probably in her 40s at the time. And she had such a compelling story of really of anxiety, how anxiety had, had shaped and taken over and limited her life.
Henry: It was just really sad to, to listen to and sad for her to recount it. I mean, she was,I'm not sure she'd had very many opportunities to kind of lay out the whole thing as she did with me. And I didn't, as I recall, I barely said a word. I just sat and listened. I didn't even need to really ask any questions because she did such a great job. And it was just so moving to hear. But then so she talked about all of these [00:05:00] ways in which it had kind of shrunk her life and impacted and limited her, but she said something at the end that I found really moving. And if,if I remember it right, she said something like,
Henry: "I am more than this." "My life is more than this." And she said it as kind of a lament, she was grieving, I think, in a way, which I heard. I heard that. I was witness to that. But at the same time, I felt that she was taking a stand that she was saying something to the effect that,I am more than this.
Henry: And if I can get some freedom from this and take back some of my life, I just know there's so much more to me. And, you know, it was just a, it was profoundly moving and also motivating for me [00:06:00] that, okay, wow, this is the kind of thing that I want to do. I want to be helpful to a person like this to be able to garner some freedom and reclaim some of this life that she is so clear
Henry: it's just precious and important to her. That to me is like, was a really good example of this compassionate possibility that we're talking about here.
Aimee: You kind of described the levels too of compassion that it seems like we've been going through the five levels, you know, like the understanding, seeing the truth, what we talked about last episode, see what is, accept what is, choose wisely, and that motivation to move forward, that courage. There's a quote I really like from Sister Helen Prejean that I think links up here, author of Dead Man Walking. She said, "People with broken lives often come [00:07:00] from lives with broken promises." And I think this really speaks to this compassion of possibility. None of us are broken. I don't believe that.our actions or externally, it might feel or look just surface level, like something's broken, right? Or judged as such on the surface. It looks like things aren't working. But she suggests that this isn't just a broken person, breaking things around them. That instead, the promises, the expectations that we have as human beings- so I'm talking about like the very evolutionary needs that we have talked about a lot here at Joy Lab.
Aimee: Take love and compassion, for example. I think it's important to remember that we are not just wired to give that stuff. We are wired to receive it.Our system is wired to receive those good things like compassion and love. We've evolved to receive it. Our system [00:08:00] expects it like the nourishment of food and water. And so to tie this up here, it's like a promise to our system. When we first enter into this world that we'll receive these things that we will feel supported. We will receive care when we're in pain. It's the expectations of an infant and it continues through adulthood. And when we don't receive those things, then it can make that wiring kind of stagnant.
Aimee: We've talked about that. Hard to fire up as it should. So this level of possibility, to me, it reminds me that that wiring is still there always. It's ever present. It's always ready to fire up, no matter what, and we can change some of those fuses, we can practice, we can replace some wires, we can ignite those connections again, and we can make good on those promises to ourselves and to others, right?
Aimee: There's a collective nature to our suffering. To these expectations as well that I don't think is ever [00:09:00] lost. That potential is always there. So how can we see this possibility in ourselves and someone else? That we are not broken? I think we can engage in the practices we've covered in the last several episodes.
Aimee: Those are, those are helpful to build up a foundation to see our possibilities and then we just need to look. Because when we look for something, we will find it. When we look for dysfunction, we will find it. When we look for possibilities, we'll find that too. Henry, I like the way you, you frame and talk about seeing the good.Do you want to say a little bit more about that in this context?
Henry: Sure. So, seeing the good is is just a way of kind of flipping the script, if you will, that so often we are looking for what's wrong,and we've talked before about this,widely held perception that you know, we have this built in [00:10:00] monitor for being just a little bit negative, for tending to see what's wrong because it might threaten me in some way.
Henry: And if I can see it, I can maybe avoid it. So that negativity bias that is part of our biology, I think, but there is also this positivity bias, if you will, that is wired into us just as strongly, if not more so,that we just don't exercise as much, we're exercising, we're practicing the tendency to see what's wrong with me, what's wrong with
Henry: my relationships with my world outside of me, we always gravitate toward that. But what would happen if we just put a little percentage of our time and energy towards instead being very [00:11:00] conscious, purposefully seeing what is good in me, what's good in this person I'm with, what's good in my marriage or other relationship, what's good in my work.
Henry: Not with the idea of seeing it with rose colored glasses, but just trying to acknowledge that part is there too.
Henry: Yes, there's these things that we don't like that we don't want. And at the same time, there's this goodness in it that I can grow simply by directing my light towards it, my awareness, if you will.
Aimee: Yeah. Seeing the whole picture is what it is, right? That we have to remind ourselves to see the good because we've been trained to focus on the bad oftentimes.It's making me think of, a phenomenon, something called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.It's also sometimes called the frequency or recency illusion. [00:12:00] It's the phenomenon where we all of a sudden start seeing something everywhere once we learn about it or bring it to our attention for the first time. So, I'll give an example. A few years ago, I bought a lime green car and I saw it sitting there and I thought, Oh my God, I'm going to have a lime green car. I've never seen a lime green car. Nobody else has a lime green car. I'm going to be the only person driving it. I was so excited. And then, no joke, while I was driving off the lot on my way home, I saw like 12 lime green cars. I hadn't ever seen one before then. And so that's it. I'm sure other folks have had this phenomenon. I hadn't thought about green cars before. Now they're in my awareness and now I can see them. So those lime green cars always existed, right? It just wasn't until it was in my awareness for me to notice them. So it's not that we're creating these [00:13:00] possibilities, these positives, these good things. We're just allowing ourselves to see them. That's what I love about this, to learn about them, to bring them into our awareness, shine a light on them. As you said, has this ever happened to you, Henry, or like in the context of mental health too, if you want to draw the line back.
Henry: Well,I am thinking of something. I don't know that it's really directly relevant to this conversation, but I'm going to share it anyway. So, a few years ago, I was just nagged by hip pain. I was, it was bothering me at night. It was, it was my left hip and it just wouldn't go away. You know, I'd dealt with that problem off and on for a while, but it seemed like it was a lot worse.
Henry: So I went to, to see a sports medicine doc who ordered an MRI and the MRI showed that there was some damage there that he thought could be repaired with kind of a simple procedure to, I [00:14:00] don't remember exactly what it was called, but just, but not a whole hip replacement or anything like that. So, um, so he sent the MRI to a surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon who was really good at this, dealing with this technique.
Henry: And it took a couple of weeks, but the surgeon's nurse called me one day and I'm on the phone. I remember I was, it was the middle of a day with seeing patients and so it was a work day and she called me and said, "Oh, Dr. so and so looked at your MRI and he said, it is too bad. Your hip is too far along to do this procedure. You're just going to have to live with it as long as you can and then get a total hip replacement."
Henry: So I hung up the phone and I kid you not, within 10 seconds my hip was hurting a lot worse than it did before. A lot worse. And so then I thought, [00:15:00] well, okay. I'm just gonna, I'll do what I can. I have this trip planned to hike, hike the Grand Canyon, just like a couple of weeks from then.
Henry: And so I talked to my sports medicine doc, can I do this? You know, am I going to, am I going to do any more damage? He says, no, you're not going to do any more damage. It just might hurt. So I did the trip. This is 12 years ago. And my hip really has not bothered me since. So I think, I had this very clear, dramatic example.
Henry: I, I had to laugh at myself even when I had this, literally, probably a hundred percent increase in the amount of, pain I was having simply by
Aimee: Talking
Henry: Changing my, my thought about it, you know, but then Ichanged my thought again and just decided, well, I'm just going to go about my active life and kind of see what happens.
Henry: And it felt so much better. I just forgot about [00:16:00] it. So that's where the possibility comes in. It's like, okay.And I have this tendency to do that. I do tend to be an optimist where I am always looking for possibility for whether it'swithin myself or the people I work with or friends or what have you.
Henry: So this comes very naturally to me. This aspect of compassion is my favorite. I'll be honest. It's just, I just love it. I think it is, such a helpful way to look at compassion that, you know, it's, it's not just about suffering.
Henry: It's not just about what's painful or what's wrong. It's about the possibility of emerging of transforming our suffering. Of letting it go of somehow letting the body work properly again. I think it was just that my hips were locked up and hiking all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, which almost killed me in different ways. [00:17:00] Um, it loosened, it loosened things up, you know, it's like, just go about your life and do the best you can.
Henry: And, when you allow things the opportunity to work the way that they're supposed to work. These good things can happen. We don't get in our way much.
Aimee: Yeah, 'cause that's how they work, right? It is, we, again, are a multitude of things. I think as somebody who is not really a optimist, um, this one is hard for me, but at the same time, I really like it. The compassion of possibility, because I don't want to miss what is before me, right? Like, So it's not that, again, we're not trying to pull things that don't exist. We're trying to see the whole picture. And to not see the possibility that is within something is to not see something. So I don't want to miss it. I don't want to be wrong about something.So there is opportunities, I think, to find our way [00:18:00] into the compassion of possibility, no matter how you feel you fall into this, we, and we talk about this a lot, the positivity, negativity or pessimist, optimist spectrum. This is not outside of anyone's capabilities, even us pessimists. This is a skill just like the rest of them.So,we're wrapping these five levels of compassion up. I hope that this has been really helpful for you all. I feel like it's been helpful for me just working through these levels as well. As we were prepping for these episodes. I am just constantly reminded as well, during our element of compassion over at the Joy Lab program, when we're really working on it, how good it feels to practice it.
Aimee: Pfft. Mm
Aimee: It's never a drag.
Aimee: it's not like going to boot camp class or something, getting your butt kicked and needing to lay on the couch with ice packs. Or, getting to the bottom of the, Grand Canyon and realizing [00:19:00] you, I'm just not getting back up again. You can always get back up to practice this stuff.It's not that it's easy, but it is always nourishing. no matter who you are. I think that's what's really beautiful about this.
Aimee: So, I'm excited as well. Gratitude is our next Element. That'll be just as nourishing as this Compassion one. So be sure to stay with us for our next episodes on that Element. Until next time, let's close with some wisdom that speaks to this compassion of possibility. This is from Nelson Mandela, a sage of compassion in action, I'd say. Here's what he said.
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