3.5.3 The Power Of Compassion - And Surprise

My experiences through many years of work, in different settings, but particularly on the street, formed my opinions as to what modalities I feel should have dominance, or have a substantial influence in supporting people in such deep distress that they are on the margins of society.

In a previous Chapter I referred to liquids defying gravity at temperatures close to absolute zero.

Analogous to that situation, I have met people who have suffered deep hurt and trauma, and whose confidence, esteem and general sense of self is so low that I sometimes imagine them to be at a kind of psychological absolute zero, where the cognitive process that most of us use in decision making doesn’t work.

To demonstrate this point I will recall two incidents in the next two posts – illustrating the power of compassion and surprise in situations where normal cognitive behavioural interventions, would have (in my opinion anyway) failed abjectly.

I could have chosen many examples – I chose the ones in the next two posts because I thought that should the actions not have had the effect that they did the outcomes may have been, well, pretty bad!

I am sure that you (that is, if you have worked in this area for any length of time) will have stories of your own illustrating how compassion worked when all else failed.

I encourage you to dig them up from the deep nooks and crannies of your memories and reflect on them.

In the previous post I stated that I’d give examples of situations where compassion and surprise (which is linked to creativity) worked when (I believe anyway) nothing else would have worked.

This incident happened many years ago one night, quite late, doing streetwork.

It was in a dimly lit corner of a housing estate and I was with a female colleague.  We were with some young men who were obviously stoned and a row broke out and it got quite serious.

One man who I felt was higher on drugs than the others pulled a knife and swung it in the direction of the face of the young man he was having the row with.  He cut him on the forehead – and some blood immediately began to ooze out.  The volume of the shouting and roaring rose and two or three on each side began to adopt the fight position as another knife was pulled out.  (There was going to be no flight here)!  I froze. 

I was not expecting this – it had blown up out of nowhere.  My immediate thoughts were that someone might be killed or seriously injured.  I hadn’t a clue what to do – all young men were way beyond bargaining and I felt that anything I did would make a bad situation worse. We were also far away from everywhere – i.e. help was not nearby, mobile phones hadn’t been invented, and it was also late at night – everything was closed.

But I decided that I’d have to do something – perhaps shout louder than all the others with threatening statements about doing life in prison, is it worth it, etc. – a kind of desperate final effort to impose my adult authority and, through fear of dire consequences, make the young men think!

(Now it must be remembered that all the above happened in a split second).

My colleague, however, was not at all in the state of panic that I was in.  Acting on what I can only assume was her womanly intuition she leaned forward, and without saying a word, with a white tissue, wiped the blood off the forehead of the young man that had the cut.

In another split second the entire atmosphere changed.

Calmness descended on the entire scene.  Knives were put away.  The young men’s body language changed from aggressive fight position to a kind of fuck it resignation.  After a tense moment or two they went their separate ways.

As we debriefed later my colleague told me that she only saw the wound, and she was oblivious to everything else.  We were trying to analyse it, but it was beyond analysis at that time.

This is the second incident of two illustrating the power of compassion – I described the first in the previous post.

Just a reminder; these incidents are examples of situations where compassion and surprise (which is linked to creativity) transformed impossible situations.

This incident happened when a female student who was on placement with our Project was on an activity with me.  We were bringing a young woman on a recreational activity.

This young woman was one of the most hurt that I have ever met, and her family would have had all nine characteristics in my description of our Focus Group. In her younger years she had been in care but now, at 15, was back in the community again.

On the activity, our student got on great with the 15 year old, and showed her a precious family heirloom that had been given to her by a deceased relative, and how precious this item was.

As we were returning home, after a very good day, the student suddenly noticed that her heirloom was missing.  We searched everywhere in the minibus, front, back, seats, floor, dashboard.

Now there was no doubt in my mind that the 15 year old had taken it.  Her body language and demeanour, anger at being asked a simple question, etc. were all a giveaway.  I tried everything.  For example, how much it meant to the young student with whom she had built up a very good relationship.   Also, what consequences would ensue if we went to the Gardaí and reported the loss – as we would have to do, it being such an important item.  This cajoling, bargaining and threatening went on for quite some time.  Even though I was getting angrier, I was getting absolutely nowhere, and I knew it.

For a short while, there was dead silence in the front of our little minibus.

Next thing, I noticed the student weeping very gently.  This was not pretence, or done for effect.  The tears being shed were very genuine tears as she faced the loss of her precious keepsake.  Weary from the struggle, I had no idea what to do or say.

After a few moments, the 15 year old piped up ‘Oh look at the floor, I think I see it’. 

And with great speed, and impressive sleight of hand, managed to pick it up from the floor, presenting it to the student with great joy.

With unbridled relief the student thanked the 15 year old for her honesty and I also weighed in with some positive comments on how good her eyesight was.

In the next post I will attempt to unpack this incident and the previous one in respect of compassion.

If I was analysing the two incidents described in 3.5.3.2 and 3.5.3.3 now, I would identify a unique human characteristic, compassion, as being a major influence in what I might call – given the context of the two incidents, relatively successful outcomes.

In fact, as I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that the only other thing that might have worked was to raise the level of fear above the level of the young men’s out-of-control anger, (in the first example), and above the level of the 15 year old’s compulsive acquisitiveness (in the second).

And what would that have done – even if it had solved the problem in the immediate situations?

It would have affirmed the belief that fear is the best way to solve a problem.

I realised that it had been an extraordinary privilege to have been present at such rich learning experiences – not that I’d wish to have too many of them again!

But I actually learned more from those types of incidents than I could have learned from a thousand books.

And while I have focused on the power of compassion in the above incidents it must not be forgotten that the other major factor was, of course, surprise, a kind of first cousin of creativity.

That is, doing something totally unexpected and, perhaps, what the young men (in the first example) or the teenage girl (in the second example) may never have experienced before.

And, reflecting on my own and my colleague’s input (looking back on the knowledge that I have now), something in our unconscious may have been willing to hold the situations and trust the root foundation of emergence.

I could give loads of less dramatic examples which occurred more often (and still do) but which, perhaps, carry a lot less emotional energy than the experiences just described! It was because of such experiences (and many others like them) that I formed the opinions that:

1. Modalities that include compassion, warmth and presence with, indeed, an element of good surprise and creativity will stand a much better chance of success in firstly engaging with and then effecting healing in people who are on high alert, are very hurt and under extreme stress or pressure, i.e. members of the families that constitute our Focus Group.

2. If Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which I will describe below and which is very common and proven to be successful in many diverse settings (and which I hold in high esteem) is used it needs to be used within a frame of compassion, presence, warmth and similar traits.

In addition to solving the problem in the immediate, I believe that compassion, creativity and surprise also serve to assure people in the long term that they will be included and valued.

The usefulness of such traits is discussed in far more detail in the following Sections, and in particular the Section on Practical Applications.