Compassion Labeling me as a racist Tamara, wasPutin

[Shannon Nelson]

I am guessing that none of them bring this into the consulting room—or at least not so much of it; none of us can be completely free of our biases, assumptions, traumas, and the limits of our experience. HOWEVER, we also don’t have the same expectations and requirements of patients, as we do of our co-workers and community members. And also of course the mission is different with patients.

I keep thinking we could all benefit from seeing “people-who-don’t-agree” in a more similar light to patients: we’ve all got our wounds, limits and needs (well maybe a few of us are perfect, but anyone who is, please don’t let on!), and sometimes wildly different backgrounds, experiences and histories.

I had the privilege once of prescribing for someone I’d known “from the outside”, an in-law in my extended family, who had beaten his wife, and been a generally, um, less-than-helpful member of the family. I was very interested to understand what leads a person to behave that way; and I was full of optimism that maybe I could help. It was a fascinating case taking. To his great credit, he opened up very readily, explaining what he felt, thought, believed, wanted and didn’t want. After that I could never look at him in quite so negative a way; as so often happens, understanding brought a measure of compassion.

Back to that old saying: Never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. (Gender-neutralized for the modern age!) Though I hadn’t *walked* that mile, at least I briefly tried on the "shoes”.

I always think that, if we have compassion for each other, everything else is fix-able. Not as a *substitute* for healing or protection or laws or education, but as a framework for all of those. And without it, we will never learn to understand each other.
Shannon