By Agnes Wong

As a physician-educator who has worked in healthcare for more than 30 years, I have served numerous patients and worked with many healthcare professionals, caregivers, and physicians-in-training. As a chaplain, I have talked to many inmates, palliative care patients, and other chaplains. As I serve in these capacities, I have witnessed the many joys and sufferings of our human existence. I have also been humbled to see the strength, courage, and resilience that humans demonstrate despite the trials and tribulations of life. I have pondered deeply on what it takes to transform the obstacles to compassion into opportunities for our growth and development, as well as the additional ingredients that are essential for leading a compassionate, flourishing life.

Psychological Well-Being

As we become more aware, more attuned, and more reflective, we may discover many uncharted territories that pose difficulties. Counseling (or coaching, psychotherapy) can bring about additional clarity, openness, and deep healing. By talking to a trained professional, we can express thoughts and feelings that could not be shared with our loved ones or friends. Talking to a professional also allows our two [brain] hemispheres to process and integrate difficult experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Neuroscience has shown that the right side of our brain processes emotions and autobiographical memories and often causes us stress through ruminating mental activities. By putting our experience into words and the details of a memory in order, the left side of the brain helps us to make sense of our feelings and recollections. In this way, we can respond to setbacks in a healthy way.1 Talking to a professional is also a co-creative process. It offers us new perspectives on our habitual thinking style, so that we can find a novel creative approach to handle life situations and relationships through a combination of reframing, decentring, and repatterning.

For some of us who may have been exposed to sufferings at a very young age, psychological wounds could leave a strong imprint in our physical, mental, emotional, and psychosocial being. In this situation, mindfulness practices, compassion training, and cultivation of inner compassion may not be sufficient to unblock our deep, unconscious psychological defenses against raw, painful wounds. In this regard, psychotherapy can help point out and unravel the defenses that we have erected so that they gradually lose their hold on us. It also guards us against “spiritual bypass”; that is, using spiritual ideas and practices to evade or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological trauma, and unfinished developmental tasks.2

Psychotherapy also helps us develop authentic self-expression as mature adults. Therapy that incorporates the need for “secure attachment”—safety, compassion, nonjudgment, and mirroring—and that nurtures authenticity can help us rediscover our basic goodness. It helps us identify our unique talents and develop a genuine expression of our innate capacities as self-actualized mature adults so that we can transcend self-focused needs and increase compassionate actions. 

Notes

1. DJ Siegel and TP Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind (Delacorte Press, 2011).

2. D. Flics, “What Meditation Can’t Cure” in: Melvin McLeod, Tynette Deveaux, ed. Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly (Shambhala Publications, 2017): 65–71.

Reprinted, with permission, from the Art and Science of Compassion, A Primer: Reflections of a Physician-Chaplain by Dr. Agnes M. F. Wong (Oxford University Press, 2021). 

Agnes M. F. Wong, MD, PhD, FRCSC, is a professor of ophthalmology, neurology, and psychology at the University of Toronto, and an active staff ophthalmologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In addition to her clinical and academic work, she is also a trained chaplain whose work combines mindfulness, compassion, reflective practices, and system thinking. Learn more about her work at agneswongmd.com. To find a local therapist, go to tinyurl.com/425xxvt3.