Compassion

Feeling warmth toward suffering (especially your own) without needing to fix it instantly.

Description

Compassion is the social emotion of Self: it lets protectors soften and exiles surface safely. It isn’t pity or approval; it’s contact without recoil. Systems heal faster when someone inside says, “of course you felt that way.”

What Compassion is NOT:

Coddling; moral superiority; performative niceness.

Examples:

Telling a rage part “thank you for protecting” instead of “stop.”
Recognizing an exile’s shame as context, not defect.
Staying kind to yourself mid-relapse.

see also:

Self; Self-energy; Co-regulation; Empathy; Corrective Emotional Experience (CEE); Empathy vs. Compassion