What is the Compassionate Mind way of thinking?

Compassion in essence is the awareness of suffering or distress in oneself or others, and deep commitment to try to relieve and/or prevent it.

Compassion is linked to two different psychologies we can aim to develop.

The first is courage: the ability to understand approach and engage with suffering and distress.

The second comprises dedication and wisdom: the desire and motivation to alleviate suffering, to uproot its causes and seek to prevent suffering in the future.

We need compassion in order to enable our brains to work more effectively. The brain has evolved over time, and the interaction between the new brain system which gives humans unique attributes and competencies (imagination, planning, rumination, integration, creativity) and old brain system (motives, emotions and behaviours) can sometimes be conflicting and unhelpful, and at worst can lead to atrocities,  the result of new brain competencies justifying actions and finding sophisticated ways of doing things that are essentially old brain motivations.

It is important to be aware of these conflicts in order to address the problems they create. Our brains contain at least three major emotion regulation systems which are designed to do different things but also to interact with each other.

These can be categorised as:

drive and resource seeking (pleasure and excitement),

soothing and affiliation (contentment, safeness and connection) and

threat and self-protection (anger, anxiety and disgust). The threat emotions are designed to turn on fast and to turn off positive emotions. The effect of this is to start the fight or flight response, but can also inhibit us so that we freeze or stop. The threat emotions are often triggered by factors such as conflict, stress and criticism. In addition, the more the threat system gets activated, the more sensitive it becomes, primarily because the brain has become organised to deal with these negative emotions. This means that build-up of a stress/conflict/blame environment over time makes the problem progressively worse, and may consequently take longer to resolve.

We can use compassion to resolve conflicts within the brain by creating contexts in which compassion can flourish. Our brains have been biologically designed to be calmed by attachment (loving, caring and kindness), and neural circuits have evolved to detect whether the social environment is safe by looking for recognisable patterns such as patterns of facial muscles, eye contact and voice tone.

The new brain skill humans have in being able to imagine, think and reflect can be important in training the brain, and by imaging ourselves to be in a safe, supportive and loving environment, we can help to suppress negative threatening emotions. We can therefore extend this skill to help others  we can try to combat threat emotions by using compassion, evidenced by creating a comfortable environment for others by the use of kindness, warmth and understanding.

How can the Compassionate Mind way of thinking benefit Family Mediation Practices?

It is important that practitioners recognise and are aware that emotional threats such as stress, conflict and criticism (which are common in all disputes, particularly those involving the breakdown of relationships, children and money), turn off positive emotions, trigger negative responses, and make it harder to reach proposals. Even couples who seem on the surface to be parting amicably may still be harbouring feelings of hurt or loss of trust which may be harder to identify, but need to be addressed.

Starting with a compassionate and understanding attitude and using tools such as facial expressions (smiling), voice tones (kind/warm) and body posture can help to soothe and reduce the threat, making sessions more productive and ultimately promoting resolution rather than prolonged antagonism.

The course will focus on:

• the threat system seen regularly in family mediation work, which is a direct result of the conflict and anger often at the heart of a dispute

• the underlying motivations which organise the mind, and the relationships between new brain and old brain functions

• how threat leads to negative responses and actions

• balancing the different emotion regulation systems by creating contexts in which compassion can flourish

• practice in organising our minds according to different motivations, and promoting the compassionate mind rather than the threat mind

• the benefits to self, including increased cognitive flexibility, increased evaluative accuracy and reduced self-criticism

• the ways in which we as practitioners can help clients by promoting an environment which is reassuring and soothing, thereby helping to reduce the effect of the threat system

• the benefits to clients and to the resolution of disputes as a whole

A few places remain at present for this Family Mediation training event on 22nd September 2017 please contact Austin Chessell from the Family Mediation Centre (www.thefamilymediationcentre.co.uk) by e-mail achessell@thefamilymediationcentre.co.uk to book your place.

The cost is £155 per delegate and attracts 5 CPD points.