Compassion That Builds Resilience

What if the fastest way to help kids bounce back isn’t more advice, but more care they can feel? We sat down with clinical child psychologist Dr. Peter Montminy to unpack compassion as a teachable skill—empathy plus the intention to help—and how it strengthens resilience at home and in the classroom. From the first minutes, we connect the science to the everyday: mirror neurons tuning into others’ emotions, the vagus nerve shaping the “vibe” of a room, and the dopamine and oxytocin shifts that turn caring into a virtuous cycle of calm and connection.

We share how compassionate attention opens kids up to coaching on coping, communication, and self-regulation. You’ll hear a guided loving-kindness practice you can try tonight—wishing safety, health, happiness, and ease for a loved one, yourself, a struggling child, and the wider community. Then we get tactical: morning intentions that take 60 seconds, end-of-day reflections that take two, gratitude jars that keep small wins visible, and kindness walls that change classroom culture. These small routines build social-emotional skills, reduce isolation, and create safer spaces for learning.

We also tackle a common myth: compassion isn’t rose-colored denial. It’s a clear-eyed response to real stress that balances hard truths with purposeful care. By modeling that stance—“things are tough, and we can still choose kindness”—we give kids a resilient mindset they can carry into conflict, setbacks, and growth. If you’re a parent, caregiver, or educator looking for evidence-based tools to make compassion a daily habit, this conversation offers both science and steps you can use right away.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review with one compassion ritual you’ll try this week. Your small actions create ripples.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for immediate support.

This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation and A Mindful Village.

Jana Marie Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in State College, Pennsylvania which harnesses the power of creative expression and dialogue to spark conversations build connections, and promote mental health and wellbeing among young people and their communities. Learn more at Jana Marie Foundation.

A Mindful Village is Dr. Peter Montminy's private consulting practice dedicated to improving the mental health of kids and their caregivers. Learn more at A Mindful Village | Holistic Mental Health Care for Kids.

Music created by Ken Baxter.

(c) 2025. Jana Marie Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

This podcast was developed in part under a grant number SM090046 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies, and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA, HHS or the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission
• 1:27 Defining Compassion Beyond Empathy
• 4:05 Compassion’s Role In Resilience
• 7:41 Health Benefits Of Compassion
• 16:43 How To Practice Compassion Daily
• 18:15 Guided Loving-Kindness Practice

Transcript

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 0:19

Welcome to the Ripples of Resilience Podcast by Jana Marie Foundation, where we dive into the heart of supporting young minds. I'm Marisa Vicere, president and founder of Jana Marie Foundation, and I'm so glad you're here. The Ripples of Resilience Podcast provides parents, caregivers, and educators with practical tools and insights to support children's mental health, emotional resilience, and well-being. Each episode covers strategies for fostering open communication, building resilience, and creating safe, nurturing environments where young minds can thrive. Today we're diving into compassion. We're developing the skills to notice our own humanity and the humanity in others. And I'm not giving this a lump. I'm joined by our resident expert, Dr. Peter Montminy, a clinical child psychologist and parenting coach from a Mindful Village. Welcome.

Dr. Peter Montminy: 1:16

Yeah, glad to be back.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 1:19

Thank you so much for joining us on this important conversation. So to start off, what is compassion?

Dr. Peter Montminy: 1:27

Yeah, compassion does begin with empathy and then it adds a little extra spice to it. So empathy is the capacity, right, to really feel another person's feelings, to take their perspective or point of view, not just their thoughts, but really the emotional kind of what they might be feeling. And it's hardwired into all of us as social mammals to be able, you know, the attachment bond from very at from birth on, the attachment relationships are critical to survival of each individual and the whole species. And it comes about because we're wired for empathy, to really feel literally for and with. We have mirror neurons that uh reflect when someone else says or thinks or feels something. We have the ability to kind of literally kind of put ourselves in those shoes or take that perspective. Now that perspective taking develops over time from childhood to adulthood, but we develop the capacity to, again, feel someone else's pain. The same parts of the brain light up. If we see someone else laughing or crying, our sad and happy circuits in our brain light up. We have the vagus nerve where you have a gut feeling, right? You just have that gut feeling of connecting with someone or something's off. You can go into a room and feel the vibe in the room. And literally there, the vagus nerve is a whole, it's called the second brain and the gut, the whole uh vagus nerve system that bundles around our organs that really is perceiving and picking up a sense of the emotional tone of the interaction right now happens even before we consciously think of anything. It's absolutely fascinating. So we have this capacity for empathy to really feel, literally feel for others. And of course, there are individual differences in a range of this, and there are some difficulties. Individuals on the spectrum sometimes have a little bit more difficulty, autistic spectrum, and certainly other conditions, sociopathy, where that's lacking. But for most of us, we have this capacity, and even those that are lacking it can cultivate it, by the way. But it's empathy. Compassion is empathy or this ability to feel foreign with others, combined with the intention to act, combined with the intention to help the other person or to relieve their suffering. So it's compassionately seeing someone's pain and wanting to help relieve that pain is a simple working definition of compassion.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 3:54

Thank you so much for sharing all of that with us. So our podcast is really talking about resilience. So how does compassion fit into that and why is it so important?

Dr. Peter Montminy: 4:05

Yeah, well, it is important because there's a fun phrase I like. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. People aren't going to listen to you. Our kids aren't going to listen to you, your students aren't going to listen to you until they know that you actually care about them and you have some caring connections developed with them. And then they're able to develop two things. One, feeling connected to someone else is already, as we've defined before, an important component of resilience. So, all right, having relational resources is already an important component. And when you have that compassionate connection with our kids, then they're able to listen to you, coaching them on developing the other emotional, social-emotional skills needed for resilience as well, right? And so we bring mindfulness, which is the ability to pay attention to what's here now, and compassion, which is the heart center of the work of bringing a caring attention, a kind and caring attention to what's here now. We bring those two components together to really foster resilience, strengthen our kids, and healthy relationships with one another. I talk about, you know, we need both an open mind to what's here now and an open heart to what's here now. You could practice, you know, attention-focusing skills that would not be mindfulness because it doesn't have the heartfulness alongside of it. A trained assassin is able to focus very well, but we wouldn't call that mindfulness or compassionate focusing our attention, right? We want to bring the heart to our work as well. Now, why is that so important? In addition to what I've just said, research studies have shown, and again, often confirm what we know in real life, that the more we cultivate compassion, the more we build this as a real skill or practice into our lives purposefully, we see many, many physical and mental health benefits very similar to our mindfulness practices. Physically, it increases the happy and healing hormones in our brains and bodies. The more we practice noticing what other people are feeling and then bring an intention and an action to care and help them, literally we are growing and getting squirts of dopamine and oxytocin in our brain that are flowing more and more. And those are the feel-good hormones, and oxytocin being the love hormone or the bonding hormone that gets us on a virtuous cycle of care rather than a vicious cycle of stress. We reduce the amount of anxiety and depression the more we're cultivating compassion, the health benefits physically, it improves our immune system responses. Huge area study, psychoneuroimmunology, that brings together our mind and our body again in Western medicine, and it shows that compassionate practices improve the immune system, lowers the blood pressure, improves the speed of recovery from illness and injury in hospital stays. So we really want to bring this in, and ultimately it, of course, again, comes back to strengthening the relationship. It deepens the emotional bonds, the more empathy and connection we have, the less isolation we or our kids feel, and we create a positive contagion effect. So pretty good stuff.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 7:26

Yeah, it seems like a one one for everyone, right? So definitely really important when we think about building resiliency and taking care of ourselves and others around us. You said this is something that we can cultivate. So how do we develop more compassion in our lives?

Dr. Peter Montminy: 7:43

Yeah, like anything else, the big P word, we practice it, right? Remember, what you focus on grows, and what you practice grows stronger. Now, again, we have, like we talked about with mindfulness last week, we can have both formal and informal practices. And that simply means a formal practice simply means taking the time to sit and intentionally incline the mind to be kind, right? With repeated compassion practices. And again, we can use guided meditations or guided little mental imagery exercises where we keep growing the brain circuits for caring and connecting with others. And we learn that skill just like we would learn the skills of playing the piano if we kept repeatedly practicing playing the piano. And we grow those circuits in our mind and we grow healthier habits of mind. Common compassion practices include loving-kindness practices, gratitude practices, generosity, forgiveness, and really caring connections. So there's ways to literally just let me focus my mind here and now on things I'm grateful for today is a beautiful, and other times we've talked about gratitude as a core practice. So these compassionate practices is how we we grow it.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 8:58

I love that. And so let's take a moment to practice. Will you walk us through that?

Dr. Peter Montminy: 9:07

I would love to. One of my favorites, literally near and dear to my heart. So again, let's just invite everyone to get seated comfortably if you're not already sitting in a manner that feels comfortable to your body right now, allowing you to be alert yet relaxed. Hmm. And you may gently uh allow your eyes to close or bring your gaze down in front of you to reduce distractions. I want you to picture picture yourself sitting comfortably somewhere in one of your favorite places, indoors or out, with one of your favorite people that you see often nowadays, you know, you see fairly regularly. It's a person you have a kind and loving relationship with, not too complicated. When you see them, they bring a smile to your face. So with someone that you often see nowadays, picture yourself right now sitting comfortably with them, and you're enjoying some quiet time and conversation with them, and you decide you want to really let them know how you feel about them and what you wish for them. This is a person who's so kind and brings joy to you and others, and you have some kind thoughts or wishes that you want to share with them. And you just reflect for a moment. And after reflecting, you might even say out loud to them, you know, I just want you to know I really wish for you to be safe, safe from harm. May you be safe. I wish for you to be healthy and strong. I really wish that. May you be healthy. I wish for you to be happy. May you be happy and peaceful. May you be peaceful. And may you live with ease. And we might share those thoughts with them. And we might notice how it feels inside for us right now, as we do, either out loud to them or even just looking at them. Feeling the warmth of care and kindness for them. And notice what that feels like in our heart right now. The person, your dear friend, or family member, smiles and appreciates your care. And they respond to you in kind with sincere words, saying back to you, I also wish for you to be safe from harm. May you be safe. May you be healthy and strong. I wish for you too to be happy and peaceful. May you live with ease. And you take it in. And you take it in and appreciate that they really do have that care for you. And they smile and say they need to move on right now, and they get up and leave, and you'll see them again soon. And you sit in the space for a little bit. And you appreciate what it feels like to have that care. And you practice maybe bringing some of that care back to yourself, taking in really the good love of that person and others that you know care for you. Even when you have trouble caring for yourself. And you might just bring a hand or both hands to your heart right now. And as you hold your heart, or perhaps just your arms, and literally kind of hug yourself a little bit right now. Maybe as you hold yourself a little bit here with tenderness, you can reflect and focus the mind on taking these thoughts in to heart, literally. May I be safe from harm. May I be safe. May I be healthy and strong. May I be healthy. May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I step into this day with a peaceful heart. And notice what it feels like to focus the mind on these kind thoughts and wishes for yourself right now. We can also bring to mind then a picture of our children, perhaps a particular child who we care a lot about, a student that we care a lot about. Maybe one who's struggling a bit right now. And we can send them these kind thoughts and wishes, focusing our mind for that child. May you be safe. May you be well. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. Notice what it feels like in this moment to have these kind intentions for another for this child. And maybe keeping this in mind with you as you interact with the child next time. We can do many variations of this. We'll do one more where we can just widen our attention to our whole family, our whole classroom. Our school, our community. And why not the community of all human beings? May all beings be safe. I set the intention and wish. May all beings be safe. May all beings be well and healthy. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful and find peace in their hearts even as they face adversity. May it be so. And when you're ready, you can slowly open your eyes or reorient to the room and again to our conversation today.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 16:06

Thank you. You can really feel that warmth that comes to you, and that you're spreading out into the world as well with that practice. So I know in my house I try really hard to practice gratitude. We have a gratitude jar that we try to put something into every night. Our whole day might not be good, but we can find good moments in every day. So we try to focus on those and write them down for moments that we're grateful for.

Dr. Peter Montminy: 16:34

Beautiful.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 16:35

We also try really hard to do acts of kindness out into our community, recognizing that just the act of doing that kindness is reward enough. Yes. So what are some other ways though that I can practice compassion within the household or within the schools or the programs that we're running here at the Foundation?

Dr. Peter Montminy: 16:53

Well, you're already practicing what you preach, Marissa, with those examples, and I know many others. And that's really it. It's just intentionally, and I maybe add a little bit of uh extending your ideas here, you know, add a little structure to it. But set the habit of having a daily morning intention. My intention today is to practice loving-kindness. My intention today is to have a moment of being generous to somebody. My intention today is to look for something that I actually enjoyed and feel grateful for. So you can set your daily intentions in the morning, and then I like to bookend that with a little ritual of a daily reflection towards the end of your day. And again, we can do this ourselves, or we're talking about how to bring this to our children, so we do it with our children. Our students at school, simple begin of the day. What's your intention for how you're going to get through this day a little bit better? The end of the day, a two-minute reflection where we can go around in a circle. At home, can they come home from school, and part of our kind of transition to home can be, you know, rather than just how was your school day? What was one act of kindness you saw today, or maybe one act of kindness you did today? And so it's just intentionally little, little bits of practice, right? Or at mealtime we go around and say, what's one thing we really appreciated about today, much as you said you do. Or at bedtime, you can journal these and make little compassion journals or kindness journals. You can have a big mural on the wall in your classroom and keep adding the acts of kindness that people are witnessing throughout the day. And what you do is you start creating, again, that positive snowball effect of people looking for the good and then being more receptive to the good, and you start responding in kind, and bit by bit we get those little ripples that hopefully grow some good stuff.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 18:51

I love it. One of the things we did with our shine kids or our middle school girls group is pillowcases, and we get the fabric markers and they can write on them, and then they go to bed thinking about all those great things that have happened throughout the day, the week, the months, the year. So do you have any other starter tips for us today, Peter?

Dr. Peter Montminy: 19:14

Well, I'll just share one more here with our listeners, and it's a practice that I begin every day with when I wake up in the morning before my feet hit the floor. I recite this little prayer or poem from Thich Nhat Hanh, and it goes like this. I wake up today smiling. And what do you think my body automatically does? It smiles. Now that doesn't mean I'm Mr. Happy all day long every day, right? Of course not. But I set the intention and begin the day with a little smile. And when I do, I get a little squirt of endorphins of dopamine that feel a little bit better, right? I wake up today smiling. Twenty four brand new hours are before me. I feel too busy. I feel like I never get my to do list done, just like everybody else. And I then realize I Start today with a deep appreciation that God has brought me 24 more hours this day to begin. I wake up today smiling, 24 brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully present in each moment as best I can, not perfectly, but I vow to try to be fully present in each moment and to see all beings with the eyes of compassion. And I set my intention towards that, incline the mind to be a little bit kind today to myself and others. I put my feet on the floor and I get going. Simple little ritual, repeated over and over again, begins to cultivate the cabits of kindness and compassion.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 20:48

I love it. Many of us that are computers have an intention that we have put on our computer that we read every day to help us get through. The work days to set us up to have a little bit more success or feel a little more grounded. And it goes so far by starting our days every day looking or reading or quoting the same thing.

Dr. Peter Montminy: 21:09

Beautiful, beautiful. One little more footnote. This isn't about Pollyanna seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, denying negative things in our lives, harm, difficulties. This is about recognizing there is real stress and difficulty in my day and in my life. And I can choose to refocus also on the beauty and the goodness around me and within me. So let's be clear, right? We're not trying to paint a rosy picture that life's always good. We're talking about this is very much a tool for being resilient in the face of those stressors and difficulties by counterweighting it with some purposeful intentions of practicing kindness and compassion.

Marisa Vicere, Jana Marie Foundation: 21:51

And we know that suffering is part of life and that things suck sometimes. And we have a power of choice of how we allow that to come into our life. Right on. So great. Well, thank you so much for being with us today and for continuing these important conversations. And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us on the Ripples of Resilience podcast. In our next episode, we'll take a look at the stages of brain development and how understanding those stages helps us respond with more patience, compassion, and intention. This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation, where we're dedicated to opening minds and saving lives through conversations that matter. And by A Mindful Village, where Dr. Peter Montminy provides holistic mental health care for kids and their caregivers. If today's message resonated with you, please share it with a friend and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a ripple. Together, let's keep showing up, speaking up, and supporting the young lives who need us most. Remember, even the smallest actions can create waves of change.