ABSTRACT
Compassion involves mindfully acknowledging our experience, with kindness, but also with the courage to face our pain and take responsibility for what people can choose, namely how they deal with it. Compassion is aptly called a 'quality of the heart' because the emotional quality is most noticeable in our heart area. Emotions can be viewed from an evolutionary perspective as messengers that indicate whether people are moving in the right direction of survival. This chapter deals with the three emotion regulation systems: the threat system, the drive system and the soothing system. The drive system is triggered by desire such as hunger for food, sex, possessions, success, status and power. The soothing system can come up when 'nothing needs to be done', and can become a trigger for the threat system. The threat system is activated by threat and danger; it is aimed at self-protection.
