Fear of having our kindness rejected or misunderstood, fear of doing it wrong. Anger, envy, and mistrust because of stereotypes and bigotry. In Between the World and Me, Author Ta-Nehisi Coates writes this on receiving the kindness of a stranger “…
This difficulty may stem from certain personality traits, worries about the thoughts of others, low self-esteem, and challenging circumstances. If you'd like to be kinder, you might try making eye contact, smiling, using your conversation partner's name, and being a good listener during interactions.
Indifference – The antithesis of kindness, indifference is a barrier to living a kind life. One cannot be kind if caring is absent; one cannot be kind if one is willing to shrug and say, “It's not my problem.” Indifference may be how we protect ourselves from strong feelings, from the caring that moves us to action.
Self-centered and greed is another reason kindness has taken a backseat. Many people are focused on their own lives, on getting ahead and doing whatever is necessary to beat the other guy. People are more interested in taking care of their own self before they reach out and extend some type of kindness to others.
Born sensitive: Some people are more kind and compassionate than others - and around half of these differences can be attributed to our genes. Being a kind and sensitive person is 'in your genes', as well as developing through upbringing and life experience, a new study revealed.
Beyond genuine kindness, other kinds of kindness are influenced by age, sex, income—and whether or not we have children.
We have a negative bias against self-compassion, because we've been burned: through humiliation, abuse, neglect, thoughtlessness. Being vulnerable enough to receive a loving acts terrifies us. Trauma makes us shun kindness. We can feel weak for accepting gestures of kindness, or undeserving.
Kindness is not weakness. Kindness is the strength we need to show when we are at our weakest. It is the compassion we give when we are hurting the most. It is what allows us to forgive even when we have been wronged.
They can be the result of genetics (or the characteristics you inherited from your parents), environment (especially in early childhood), disease, or physical or psychological damage and trauma related to an event. Two psychological terms particularly associated with a lack of empathy are sociopathy and psychopathy.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is associated with an assortment of characteristics that undermine interpersonal functioning. A lack of empathy is often cited as the primary distinguishing feature of NPD.
Definition of Barriers
There are five key barriers that can occur within a company: language, cultural diversity, gender differences, status differences and physical separation.
One of the most common barriers to generosity is spending too much in other areas. If you don't have margin in your budget, it's difficult to be more generous in charitable giving. In other words, your consumption rate is too high.
Kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem, empathy and compassion, and improve mood. It can decrease blood pressure and cortisol, a stress hormone, which directly impacts stress levels. People who give of themselves in a balanced way also tend to be healthier and live longer.
And since they tend to feel emotions on a deeper level, they suffer more... Good people would rather suffer themselves than see others suffer. It's a natural response to being able to protect loved ones. And it also means that you're willing to take over their suffering on yourself.
Often being kind to ourselves means prioritizing our needs first. If we have a people pleasing aspect to ourselves, this can be difficult and feel uncomfortable. Perhaps we learned that we always have to take care of others and not ourselves. We might have learned that taking care of ourselves is selfish and bad.
Dark empathy is characterized by emotional distance disguised as charm and understanding. It is usually motivated by personal gain. Dark empathy is related to the dark triad personality traits. The dark triad refers to the malevolent personality types of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
Lacking the ability to feel, understand and resonate with another's feelings is categorised as empathy deficit disorder (EDD). This results in difficulty forming and maintaining relationships for both the individual who lacks empathy and potential friends and loved ones.
We learn by standing atop the four pillars and exercising compassion, empathy, sympathy and forgiveness.
Kindness is a strength within the virtue category of humanity, one of six virtues that subcategorize the 24 strengths. Humanity describes strengths that manifest in caring relationships with others. These strengths are interpersonal and are mostly relevant in one-on-one relationships.
People get uncomfortable when you are kind to them because civility and kindness and courtesy are rare enough that instead of being the norm they have become something people are not used to even if it is completely sincere and no ulterior motives.
Kind and generous people are altruistic. They will go out of their way to help others. Kind people are also generous but generous people are not always kind. For example, a generous person may give a lot of money to support charities but be a scoundrel in other aspects of life.
Kindness can become toxic when making others comfortable becomes a priority and boundaries get faded. This mindset results in trying to keep your relationships conflict-free and to achieve that overly-kind people will let their boundaries get stepped over to keep it peaceful.
As a matter of personal pride, they might feel that to take what you're offering them would be to admit inferiority, inadequacy, dependency, or defeat. And such a reaction could be the case whether you're proposing a financial gift or loan, or concrete assistance with something they're struggling with.