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The Compassionate Mind (2009)

by Paul Gilbert(Favorite Author)

4.06 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

184529713X (ISBN13: 9781845297138)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Constable

review 1: This is a great book to read, which gives insight into 'evolutionary psychology' - ie. why are brains/minds/emotions are so bloody complicated - as we were not designed to function in this era, this modern world, but rather we were adapted from previous models, evolution just added things on, rather than starting from scratch! Ie. we still have the fight/flight system which kicks in in modern in situations where flight or fight is not appropriate. This leads into self compassion, it's about forgiving ourselves for being complex animals and for not being perfect, and understanding what it means to be human. It is a long book, with quite small writing but it is worth it. It talks about our under developed self soothing system in the west, which is exacerbated if you were ... morenot given a lot of this in your early years. It divides systems into three (for the sake of simplicity) Threat system, Drive system, Soothing system... If you stop and take note of your thoughts and emotions, a lot of these fall into Threat or Drive, so the task is to build upon the soothing. Great book which is good background reading for further books on Self Compassion, especially Kristen Neff's excellent book.
review 2: I really enjoyed the author's laid-back writing style and how he was able to merge the evolution and neuroscience of the mind with the need for compassion in order to reach more evolved levels of being. We are how we are, but to cope even better and to create, ultimately, a better world for all humans to live in, we each need to practice and develop more compassion toward ourselves and then towards each other. This, in the end, will change and evolve our humanness to a higher level. His arguments for and examples of how to do this are compelling. less

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