Compassion and the Stress Response

The world has felt like a stressful place for the past few years, but the past two weeks have really increased the ambient stress in the world. Adding an international land war to an ongoing pandemic made a tough situation exponentially worse, and the days just feel heavier with worry, stress, dread, and heartbreak for the state of the world. It’s so overwhelming to think about ways to be helpful in the global arena. Combine that global stress with the normal daily stressors of caring for family members, caring for medically and socially complex patients at work, etc – it feels critical for survival to rely on social support systems to buffer the stress of this trying time. When I started to prepare for today's post, this article was at the top of my search, and it felt so timely that I had to choose it.

A study from 2010[1] measured each participant's trait compassion via questionnaire, and then put participants into stressful situations. In these stressful situations, two evaluators were present along with the participant, and they were instructed to either be supportive to the participant or neutral. In the stressful scenarios with supportive evaluators, participants who scored higher on compassion measures 1) interacted more with their evaluators and 2) presented with decreased physiologic stress response. They had fewer changes in blood pressure, lower amounts of cortisol released, and they reported actually liking the supportive evaluators. Interestingly, the participants who scored higher on compassion measures did not demonstrate these responses with neutral evaluators. The study concluded that “compassion for others may increase our ability to receive social support, which may lead to more adaptive profiles of stress reactivity.”

Of course the study didn’t attempt to explain why this might be true, and I’m in the process of looking for a more recent study that might have a theory or model for the way in which compassion increases our ability to receive support from others. Does a compassionate outlook allow us to recognize compassion and loving kindness from others, and therefore to engage with it? Do we misread kindness as possible judgment or as manipulative when we are operating from a scarcity mindset or defensiveness? Do we believe that others somehow deserve the suffering they experience, and therefore apply the same judgment to ourselves, mentally blocking support from others because we somehow believe that we deserve our own suffering too?

I have tried thinking about these findings in terms of the beliefs required for compassionate action to create my own hypotheses. The first belief, that we have a meaningful relationship with a suffering person, seems directly applicable. Perhaps people operating from a compassionate framework have more practice in creating meaningful connection with strangers, therefore they attempted to connect more with the supportive evaluators. This seems at least plausible, since the more compassionate participants had more interaction overall with supportive evaluators than neutral evaluators or than less compassionate participants had with any evaluators. Increased social connectedness as a buffer for stress has been well studied[2]. It makes sense that if compassionate people are more likely to create connection and seek meaningful relationships, they would benefit more from the presence of evaluators who demonstrate openness to connection.

The other two beliefs, that people who are suffering don’t deserve to be suffering, and that people have the tools to alleviate suffering, seem less related to this study. Possibly, compassionate people don’t believe others deserve to suffer, and therefore they are less judgmental toward themselves, believing that they deserve loving kindness in difficult moments just as much as anyone else. Possibly, compassionate people recognize that a small action can have large ripple effects in alleviating suffering, and they are open to recognizing and receiving these small actions from others. However, I think the biggest take away from this study is that interpersonal connection and social support provides a strong buffer against the physiologic stress response, and that people who display compassionate tendencies are better able to access this social support.

This information feels actionable for our current global climate. We can practice empathy by imagining different viewpoints, examining our own biases, and believing what people tell us about their own lived experiences. Empathy is a critical prerequisite for compassion. If we all work to view others as people with whom we might create meaningful relationships, as well as people who don’t deserve to suffer AND we recognize our own power to alleviate suffering by being kind in small ways (perhaps more importantly than with grand gestures), we can practice compassion locally in our day to day lives, and globally by supporting people suffering throughout the world. By doing this internal work, which then overflows into external work (because definitionally, compassion implies action), we can help others AND help ourselves.

Compassion and human connection both require vulnerability. Accepting support from others also requires vulnerability. I don’t know a single person who isn’t feeling vulnerable in the current climate. Perhaps we can share this with each other, reaching out for meaningful connection rather than judging, numbing our own feelings, or putting on a brave face. By honing our compassion practice, we can decrease our own stress and improve our own physical health. We know that in the long term, elevated cortisol levels are detrimental to many aspects of physical health. We know the same about high blood pressure. If adopting a compassionate outlook can decrease these measures of stress, then compassion becomes a physical wellness practice. We can use an attitude of empathy and loving kindness to improve the state of the world, and the state of our bodies.

I’m willing to double down on anything that can buffer my stress in this moment. One of my goals for myself this year (created before I read this study!) is to accept help and kindness from others when they freely offer it. As I try to practice this, I have realized that, in order to accept acts of kindness that are offered, I have to let myself admit that I am a person who could benefit from these acts of kindness. It feels vulnerable to me to say yes when people offer to help, but so far I haven't regretted saying yes when I typically would have said no. Let’s look for meaningful connection with loved ones and strangers in this stressful time, and, by viewing the world through a compassionate lens, let’s allow ourselves to receive the support that we look to provide to others.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103110000934#:~:text=Participants'%20compassion%20for%20others%20interacted,and%20higher%20HF%2DHRV%20reactivity. [2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/social-support/art-20044445