Finding Your Way Back to Compassion. A Conversation with Dr Paul Condon

Conversation Highlights

What if compassion isn’t something we need to build from scratch, but something we’ve simply lost touch with?

In my recent conversation with Associate Professor Paul Condon on Compassion in a T-Shirt, we explored this very idea through his new book How Compassion Works. At the heart of the book is a powerful and reassuring premise: we already possess an innate capacity for love, compassion, and wisdom. The work is not so much about creating these qualities, but about finding our way back to them.

Paul and his co-author John Makransky offer a practical pathway called Sustainable Compassion Training, organised around three “modes” of practice: receptive, deepening, and inclusive. I felt this framework made a lot of sense!

1. Receptive Mode: Letting Care In

We often think of compassion as something we give. But Paul invites us to begin somewhere different…how to receive care.

Receptive mode is about reconnecting with moments of warmth, support, or kindness through what he calls a “field of care.” This might be a memory of someone who really saw you, a moment of shared laughter, or even a sense of calm in nature. Importantly, it doesn’t have to be grand. Sometimes it’s a fleeting moment that carries a felt sense of being held, supported, or valued.

In many ways, this aligns beautifully with attachment theory. When we feel safe and secure our capacity to care for others naturally expands. But when we feel threatened, disconnected, or overwhelmed, that capacity shrinks.

So, the first step in compassion is not effort, but opening up and allowing.

2. Deepening Mode: Becoming the Holding Environment

From there, the practice deepens.

Rather than getting caught up in thoughts, emotions, or even the stories behind our experiences, deepening mode invites us to shift into a more spacious awareness. Paul described this as moving from fleeting thoughts to something more expansive—a kind of inner stability or “holding environment.”

I love that phrase.

A holding environment is the capacity to be present with our experience—pleasant or painful—without needing to fix it, analyse it, or push it away. It’s a calm, steady presence that allows things to be as they are.

In Compassion Focused Therapy, we might think of this as cultivating the compassionate self—bringing wisdom, strength, and care to whatever arises. It’s not about eliminating distress, but about relating to it differently.

And from that place, something interesting happens: we begin to feel less reactive, more grounded, and more able to stay present with ourselves and others.

3. Inclusive Mode: Widening the Circle

Finally, compassion begins to flow outward.

Inclusive mode is about extending that sense of care beyond our usual boundaries—to people we like, people we struggle with, and even those we might ordinarily overlook or judge.

One of the most striking insights from Paul was how much our minds construct limiting stories about others. In a meeting, for example, we might reduce someone to “the annoying one” or “the difficult one.” But when we step into a more spacious, compassionate awareness, we start to see the fuller picture—their struggles, their humanity, their complexity.

And something softens.

This doesn’t mean we abandon boundaries or discernment. Rather, we relate with greater empathy and less reactivity. We begin to sense others not just through our own agendas, but through a shared humanity.

Sustaining Compassion

Perhaps the most important thread running through all three modes is sustainability.

Compassion isn’t about pushing ourselves harder to care. In fact, that often leads to burnout. Instead, it’s about learning how to move between these modes—receiving, grounding, and extending—in a flexible and responsive way.

As Paul put it, it’s not a straight line. It’s more like a dance.

And maybe that’s the invitation here: to return, again and again, to those small moments of care…to settle into a steadier way of being…and to let compassion gradually widen its reach. Not by force, but by remembering what was there all along.

You can watch or listen to my conversation with Dr Paul Condon on Compassion in a T-Shirt. Find Paul here.