Compassion

Compassion is concern for another’s suffering accompanied by a desire to relieve it. It combines sensitivity to distress with motivation to help.

Empathy: The capacity to understand or share another person’s feelings and perspective. Empathy can help identify suffering, though compassion adds motivation to relieve it.
Compassion meditation: A contemplative practice that cultivates concern and well-wishing toward beings who suffer. Training practices offer a focused way to cultivate compassionate responses.
Palliative care: Care focused on relieving suffering and improving quality of life for people with serious illness. Its emphasis on comfort and dignity makes compassionate attention central to care.
Karuna: A Buddhist virtue of compassion toward beings experiencing suffering. Karuna names compassion as a central virtue in Buddhist ethical and contemplative traditions.
Pity: A feeling of sorrow or concern for someone considered unfortunate or suffering. Pity can place the observer above the sufferer, unlike compassion grounded in shared humanity.
Sympathy: Concern or sorrow for another person’s misfortune, without necessarily sharing their feelings or acting to help. Sympathy may stop at concern, while compassion includes a desire to alleviate suffering.
Compassion fatigue: Emotional and physical exhaustion associated with prolonged exposure to others’ suffering and caregiving demands. Sustained exposure can strain the motivation and emotional capacity compassion depends on.
Compassionate use: Access to an unapproved medical treatment outside a clinical trial for a patient with a serious condition. The policy frames access to experimental treatment as a response to urgent suffering.
Metta: A Buddhist practice and virtue of loving-kindness toward oneself and other beings. Metta emphasizes goodwill, while karuna responds specifically to suffering.
Emotional contagion: The tendency to absorb and mirror another person’s emotional state. Sharing another’s distress is not itself the compassionate wish to relieve it.

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