We become capable of orientating caring toward medicine, developing anesthetics, antibiotics, ridding the world of smallpox, and extraordinary keyhole surgery. Unfortunately, the same competencies can be used for planning wars, building nuclear weapons and designing new tortures. Individuals may wrestle with emotional barriers such as anger, frustration, or fear that hinder their ability to respond with compassion during conflicts. Recognizing these emotions is crucial; one must find healthy outlets before engaging in discussions with others. In conflicts where interests seem opposed, identifying common goals can pave the way toward resolution. By focusing on shared objectives rather than differences, parties involved can work collaboratively toward solutions that honor everyone’s needs.
You step into their shoes and experience their emotions as if they were your own. You understand their emotions, but you maintain enough distance to offer support without being overwhelmed by their feelings. In addition, the ego-preserving bias may be exacerbated when certain overlapping regions between the Relation-Modeling and Reality-Checking components are functionally impaired. These regions include the parietal lobe, hippocampus and adjacent hippocampal cortex, and retrosplenial cortex, which are all closely related to spatial frame processing and regulation. These overlapping regions are known to mediate the regulation of egocentric-allocentric frames in a mental space, which is key to interpersonal understanding and resilience to adversity (Frith and de Vignemont, 2005; Gilbertson et al., 2007; Langston and Wood, 2010; Ekstrom et al., 2014).
We hereby describe how this brain model can explain the post-conflict bifurcation between maintaining the attunement and exacerbating ego-preserving bias. As described in the section above, when excessive free energy resulting from conflicts activates the Conflict-Alarming component, the underlying SN plays a key role in the regulation of what behavior will follow afterward. When the SN down-regulates the DMN and up-regulates FPN/VAN, the person can inhibit the previous Relational Models and potentially engage more productively with the ongoing demands from the environments. In other words, in the latter case, the individual will exacerbate the ego-preserving bias, which manifests as the inability to update one’s prior models or beliefs in the presence of salient prediction errors during the conflicts with others. Caring can be used for many non-sentient objects and beings, whereas compassion cannot.
Sara Bensman is a mediator and consultant specializing in conflict resolution. She supports individuals, couples and groups moving through conflict or separation with dignity and grace. Her reflections on divorce, co-parenting and effective communication can be found at sarabensman.com/blog. When you’re in conflict with a person whose behaviors are unacceptable to you, you need to take care of yourself and let go of the desire for the other person to be different. Staying engaged and wanting them to be better is like putting a hand back on the stove and wanting it to be cool.
Give your full attention to your partner, try to see things from their perspective, and understand that they have issues from their history and triggers, too. When people feel heard and respected, they are less defensive, more open to influence, and less combative. In other words, addressing conflict compassionately is a win for both of you. It brings clarity and authenticity to your relationship, which is essential to building trust.
In the wealthy it is the threat of losing what they have, and in the poor is the threat of not having enough. Both types of threat sensitivity can make us manipulable to threat messages and tribal aggression (Hobfoll, 2018). Many authors have also highlighted how both politicians and the media seek to stimulate these threats as the sea for them to sail into power and create complex interactions between the minds of leaders and the minds of those supporting them (Mols and Jetten, 2020). Whether in personal life, workplace settings, or social environments, disagreements arise because of differing opinions, values, or interests. While conflict itself is not always negative—sometimes it prompts growth and understanding—the way we handle it can either deepen divisions or foster connection.
PRAPAÑCA develops when the mind is already infused with conceptual thoughts (VIKALPA) that can be proliferated. Conceptual thoughts (VIKALPA) operate through the medium of generic images (SA), i.e., mental images or qualities that are generic to a class of phenomena, as opposed to those specific qualities that are unique to a given object. Closely related to VIKALPA is a mental factor of thinking or applied thought (VITARKA), which refers to a mental factor of an initial engagement of or inquiry into an object that is not sufficient for a full-blown VIKALPA (Tenzin Gyatso, 2020).
- When individuals demonstrate empathy, it signals that they are genuinely concerned about the other person’s feelings and perspectives, which helps repair damaged relationships.
- These overlapping regions are known to mediate the regulation of egocentric-allocentric frames in a mental space, which is key to interpersonal understanding and resilience to adversity (Frith and de Vignemont, 2005; Gilbertson et al., 2007; Langston and Wood, 2010; Ekstrom et al., 2014).
- Others argue that we are hard-wired and born to be (and need) caring and sharing and that it is combinations of culture and perhaps poor early life experiences that deviate us off that path (Keltner, 2009; Narvaez, 2017, 2020).
- He would often utilize a typical terror tactic within the army, such that soldiers seen as cowards or who had committed some other crimes would be beaten to death by their colleagues.
As explored in the concept of silent Compassion, holding space for suffering without immediate reaction can create transformative moments. In conflict zones, where words often escalate tensions, silent presence can offer an alternative — a way to let the depth of suffering be felt and processed. This betrayal is not only a failure to live up to cultural principles but a failure to live up to our shared humanity.
One is a kind of Hobbesian view that humans are out for themselves and will do anything to advance themselves and can only be constrained by an authoritarian state. Others argue that we are hard-wired and born to be (and need) caring and sharing and that it is combinations of culture and perhaps poor early life experiences that deviate us off that path (Keltner, 2009; Narvaez, 2017, 2020). One is that we can be enticed into behaving harmfully because we are compliant and subservient to authority.
This idea of compassion has major implications for how we relate to and treat others. It also has major implications for how we relate to and treat ourselves. Compassion directed toward ourselves, or what is called self-compassion, is about offering understanding and kindness toward ourselves when we suffer (such as when we feel inadequate or hurt, when we have not lived up to the standards we set for ourselves, etc.).
From Caring To Compassion
You are able to respond positively to others, respecting and appreciating how they are feeling. Instead of lashing out when others disappoint us or disagree with us, we can show compassion and understanding. In addition, when you care for others, focus your attention on their distress or needs, feel concern for them, and work toward providing them with what they need, you are rewarded by observing their growing well-being. Conflict is a natural part of human interaction, whether in personal relationships, workplaces, or broader social and political spheres. While conflicts are often seen as negative or something to be avoided, they can provide opportunities for growth, understanding, and resolution when managed effectively.
Hence, we need to keep in mind the challenges we face in turning our societies around and recognizing just where they have come from. The way in which the caring social mentalities became a prominent form of social relating in humans occurred in various and curious ways. One of our human adaptions was upright walking, but this was to narrow the birth canal right at the time when the baby’s head was evolving to get bigger.
I personally believe that compassion for ourselves and others is a fundamental skill for living a joyful life. Through treating ourselves and others with kindness and understanding, and through seeking to alleviate sources of suffering for ourselves and others, we can make life much easier and more enjoyable for ourselves and others. Show that you understand the other person’s feelings without taking them on as your own. Instead of saying, “I feel just as upset as you,” try, “I can see that you’re upset, and I want to support you.” This creates a healthy boundary that allows you to remain compassionate without becoming overwhelmed. For the first time in months, Ayesha and her partner had a calm, productive conversation.
Encouraging Active Listening
By interacting with different entities in the environments, biological systems are self-organizing systems that defy the second law of thermodynamics, which requires that everything naturally dissipates into a higher level of randomness. Thus, biological organisms are inter-dependently self-organizing systems. Karl Friston described Free Energy Principle, as a heuristic model of Bayesian active inference system, capable of drawing random fluctuation and outcomes bounded in a sample space (Friston, 2013). In a Bayesian Network, the relations between nodes can be designated as parent (cause), child (effect), or peer (interaction).
However, this has only been possible because it has been accepted, even endorsed by the subordinates and the oppressed themselves! In Europe, if you got convicted of certain crimes, you could be hung drawn and quartered for public spectacle. The public often did not object to this type of terror, rather it became entertainment. And there are forms of execution such as stoning, where the public are invited to take part! These historical process attest to the complex link between leaders and those who support them and this interaction is increasingly important to understand in right wing populism which can sow the seeds of harmful strife and conflict (Mols and Jetten, 2020).
Some of the tragedies of the Catholic Church include inducing fear in women over the right to choose their own birth control, and right-wing Christians cheering economic policies that promote deep inequality. There is however, a rather a big hitch to the evolution of caring and sharing. They work well in reciprocating groups of familiar others but did not evolve as a general giveaway. The problem with all motives, including caring motives, is that they are “energy” expensive and costly.
A Brain Model For The Social Cognition, Embodied Identity-grasping Beliefs, And Compassion Meditation Effects
But in my experience as a psychotherapist and coach, conflict is rarely resolved when we rush to fix it. More often, when we try to solve a problem before understanding what is happening, mainly inside us, we only amplify the conflict and deepen the divide. The next time you face a conflict—whether small or significant—choose compassion as your lens. It may not instantly solve every problem but it will change how problems are faced—and quite often that makes all the difference. Active listening means fully concentrating on what the other person is saying without interrupting or mentally preparing your rebuttal.
Crucially then, the major sources of conflict throughout evolution are over resources and resource availability and access. How conflicts of self-interest are dealt with in hunter-gatherer societies is very different from how they are dealt with in highly competitive, hierarchical, resource-rich societies such as ours (Ryan, 2019; Wilson, 2019). The ancient care and share versus control and hold strategies not only create different contexts for conflict but also indicate the means of resolving them.
It takes patience and dedication to change how you see other people and their experience of life. This is often testing, especially when what they say differs fundamentally from how we view the World or the things that they have done have profoundly wounded us in some way. Essentially, it takes self-accountability and awareness and whilst I can’t promise that you’ll get it right in every conflict, I thisromances.com can give you some tips on how you can use empathy and compassion to resolve and prevent conflict. Neuroimaging research in the neural correlates of compassion meditation is still in its infancy.
