Compassion Focussed Therapy
“Kindness, gentleness, warmth and compassion are like basic vitamins for our minds. when we give up blaming and condemning ourselves (and others) for things then we are freer to genuinely set sail towards developing the insight, knowledge and understanding we need to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions”.
Paul A. Gilbert
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) was developed to help people who have difficulties related to shame, self-criticism or self-loathing. It is an integrative therapy drawing together scientific understanding, evolution, neuroscience, attachment and emotional functioning. Shame and self-criticism are transdiagnostic problems. People who experience them may struggle to feel relieved, reassured or safe. Research suggests that a specialised affect regulation system underpins feelings of reassurance, safeness and well-being. Compassion-focused therapy states that the affect regulation system is poorly accessed in people with high shame and self-criticism, in whom the ‘threat’ affect regulation system dominates orientation to their inner and outer worlds. Compassion-focused therapy is an integrated and multimodal approach that draws from evolutionary, social, Buddhist psychology, and neuroscience.