What is Compassion Focused Therapy?
"Compassion is a basic motivation to tune our attention to the things that are difficult or cause suffering and to try as best we can to be helpful and alleviate or prevent unnecessary suffering in the future"
Dr Paul Gilbert.
Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is a mode of therapy based on theories of evolution, neuroscience and psychology. It centres around helping people to make sense of their emotions, finding ways to move from a place of threat to one of soothing and safeness and building compassion both for self and others. As well as talking, CFT utilises other approaches such as mindfulness and imagery practices and letter writing.
Compassion is a term which can be misunderstood, thought of as being weak or fluffy, however in CFT we consider the key ingredients of compassion as being courage, strength and wisdom. Compassion is the motivation that will help us to manage difficult feelings. Compassion is a strength and doesn’t simply involve being kind to ourselves, it involves turning towards, rather than away, from our distress. This takes a lot of strength and with support can help to reduce patterns we may have become stuck in. Compassion Focused Therapy focuses on building strength, courage and commitment to be able to sit with and move through distressing thoughts and emotions that may affect our actions and how we live our lives.
CFT was developed by Paul Gilbert who was seeking to help people to lessen their distress and feelings of shame. CFT seeks to reduce shame by acknowledging that, as humans we all experience suffering to varying degrees, partly because we have very tricky brains that we didn’t choose or design. This means what we feel is not our fault! Although most of us will blame and criticise ourselves at one time or another; by learning about ourselves as individuals and as part of the human race we can understand we are not to blame.
The knowledge that what we have very tricky brains and what we feel is not our fault is partly what drew Kate to train in CFT. Kate noticed that many people she saw had a layer of self blame on top of their distress, which caused more suffering. Using CFT allowed Kate to work in a way that maintained her values of empathy, openness and understanding that we all struggle in our own ways. We believe that sitting alongside somebody, without judgement, can be one of the most powerful acts.
Dr Paul Gilbert.
Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is a mode of therapy based on theories of evolution, neuroscience and psychology. It centres around helping people to make sense of their emotions, finding ways to move from a place of threat to one of soothing and safeness and building compassion both for self and others. As well as talking, CFT utilises other approaches such as mindfulness and imagery practices and letter writing.
Compassion is a term which can be misunderstood, thought of as being weak or fluffy, however in CFT we consider the key ingredients of compassion as being courage, strength and wisdom. Compassion is the motivation that will help us to manage difficult feelings. Compassion is a strength and doesn’t simply involve being kind to ourselves, it involves turning towards, rather than away, from our distress. This takes a lot of strength and with support can help to reduce patterns we may have become stuck in. Compassion Focused Therapy focuses on building strength, courage and commitment to be able to sit with and move through distressing thoughts and emotions that may affect our actions and how we live our lives.
CFT was developed by Paul Gilbert who was seeking to help people to lessen their distress and feelings of shame. CFT seeks to reduce shame by acknowledging that, as humans we all experience suffering to varying degrees, partly because we have very tricky brains that we didn’t choose or design. This means what we feel is not our fault! Although most of us will blame and criticise ourselves at one time or another; by learning about ourselves as individuals and as part of the human race we can understand we are not to blame.
The knowledge that what we have very tricky brains and what we feel is not our fault is partly what drew Kate to train in CFT. Kate noticed that many people she saw had a layer of self blame on top of their distress, which caused more suffering. Using CFT allowed Kate to work in a way that maintained her values of empathy, openness and understanding that we all struggle in our own ways. We believe that sitting alongside somebody, without judgement, can be one of the most powerful acts.
