Showing compassion for people that are physically ill or injured is something most people do reasonably well. Sure, there are exceptions, but if someone has pneumonia, a broken arm or just went through surgery people generally show concern.
It is unfortunate that we don’t tend to have the same compassion for people that are going through emotional or mental health issues. With physical issues we understand that some things are more severe than other. We are rightfully more concerned about someone with a stab wound than we are with someone with a paper cut. And we get that a would takes time to heal.
With emotional and psychological issues we aren’t so good at making those distinctions. For example, it isn’t always easy to tell the difference between someone that’s sad because their best friend couldn’t come to visit and someone that has depression. There aren’t stitches you can see. There isn’t a cast. There isn’t a 1o4 degree fever.
That lack of tangible evidence often leads people to be less compassionate about those issues. If you can do something to counteract the sadness, why not just counteract the depression? Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. That is like saying if a small cut can be dealt with by using a band-aid, why can’t a stab wound just be treated with a bigger band-aid?
Imagine if we treated physical injuries like we often treat emotional and psychological issues. It might look something like this:
Are you full of good advice?
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