Lessons Between Moves: Rummikub and the Art of Compassion

Sunday afternoon, nestled in the hills of La Jolla on a foggy morning, I found myself playing Rummikub with my longtime mentor and dear friend, Dr. Edith Eger.

As she beat me more than once, effortlessly, I might add, she also shared with me some of her pearls of wisdom.

One that stayed with me most was this: 

“You don’t have to experience something to be compassionate.”

As a therapist, I often find myself wrestling with the thought: 

How can I guide someone through their trauma if I haven’t lived that trauma myself? 

It’s a question that returns to me again and again, especially when I sit with clients whose life experiences are far from my own.

Last summer I worked with a client navigating the painful aftermath of addiction.

They shared how their substance use had cost them everything—their job, their marriage, their friendships, and most heartbreakingly, their family.

Now sober, they were beginning to understand the profound impact their addiction had on the people around them. And again the question surfaced for me: 

How can I, someone who has never struggled with addiction, possibly understand? How can I offer meaningful guidance without having walked that same path?

According to Dr. Eger, the answer returns to compassion. 

We don’t need to live someone’s trauma in order to sit with it, acknowledge it, and honor it.

Compassion does not require sameness of experience, it requires presence, humility, and humanity.

She encouraged me to shift the way I approach my clients by offering empirical, open-handed inquiry. Instead of asking, “How can I help you?” she suggests asking, “How can I be useful to you?”

What’s the difference?

“How can I help you” can unintentionally imply that the person is helpless or in need of fixing.

“How can I be useful to you” communicates partnership, respect, and collaboration.

It signals that we are in this together, regardless of whether we have lived the same experience.

And maybe that is what true compassion looks like: the willingness to sit beside someone in their pain, even when we have not known their particular path, and to offer not solutions, but solidarity.

B’ezrat Hashem, I will be returning to La Jolla soon for a round two of Rummikub!