Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)
What is Compassion-Focused Therapy?
Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is designed to help those who suffer from high levels of self-criticism and shame. It helps you to learn how to feel kinder towards yourself and others, and to feel safe and capable in a world that can seem overwhelming.
Founded by British clinical psychologist Paul Raymond Gilbert, CFT uses research and tools not just from psychology, but also from evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and Buddhism.
How is Compassion-focused therapy different from other kinds of therapy? It’s true that all talk therapies involve compassion, and that the very nature of therapy is that that you learn to be nicer to yourself. All psychotherapists work to show you understanding and empathy.
It’s also true that Compassion-focused therapy utilises tools and techniques that other forms of therapy do, such as monitoring your thoughts and feelings and looking at your past. But Compassion-focused therapy puts a greater focus than other approaches do on consciously developing your ability to feel and act compassionately and kindly towards yourself and others.
To understand how Compassion-focused therapy is different, it can help to look at what inspired its development in the first place. Founder Paul Raymond Gilbert worked with clients with complex mental health challenges who often had backgrounds that involved neglect, abuse, and trauma. He noticed many of these clients suffered a very high level of shame and self-criticism that didn’t improve with cognitive therapy only. In other words, therapies that helped Gilbert’s clients understand their negative thoughts and behaviours didn’t make them actually feel better.
Gilbert began to realise that his clients needed emotional resources as well. They needed tools to be able to soothe themselves and experience inner peace. So CFT was developed to help create positive emotional responses in those who suffered with a low sense of worth.
Compassion-focused therapy doesn’t have to be used by itself, and is often used alongside other types of therapy. For example, a Cognitive behavioural therapist or a Person-centred counsellor might also integrate Compassion-focussed therapy into their work with clients.
Who is Compassion-focused therapy suitable for?
Compassion-focused therapy helps anyone who struggles with the following issues:
Compassion-focused therapy may help with the following mental health challenges:
The evolutionary psychology behind CFT
Compassion-focussed therapy looks at the way we have more than one ‘brain’. The ‘old’ brain, which we share with all animals, helps us take care of our needs. These includes not only food and shelter and a desire to be loved, but also our personal safety. We all have an inbuilt defence system that causes our ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ reaction. The ‘old’ brain gives all animals basic emotions like anxiety, anger, neediness, and sadness.
But somewhere along the line, as humans, we then also developed a ‘new’ brain that allows us to have a distinct sense of self and to visualise and imagine. We can choose how we want to feel and how we want to live and come up with ideas we then make happen. These are all things other animals cannot do.
The problem with our ‘new’ brains is that they they can get mixed up with the ‘old’ brain in ways that cause us problems. The basic emotions and drives of the old brain can take over the new brain, using it’s creative force to stir up primal and protective emotions. For example, imagine you bump into an ex who is with a new partner and seems very happy. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity to visualise your own future in a partnership that makes you happy, you might be filled with anxiety and anger and start thinking of ways you can punish your ex for not being so happy when with you. You might even start writing an angry letter in your head. Your old brain, feeling threatened, starts using your new brain to do its work.
Why does this evolutionary theory matter? The positive side is that when we understand the whys and hows of our brain’s behaviour, we can learn to notice and change the way we think. Therapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as well as Mindfulness-based therapies focus on just this sort of thought recognition and re-focusing.
What Compassion-focussed therapy also brings into the picture is two things. The first is to let go of self blame for having such negative thoughts. Nobody chooses to have a brain that creates angst. But our brains evolved to be reactionary, it’s simply the way they are designed. The second idea that we can also then choose not just to generate new thought patterns, but also to generate certain emotions that can help us, such as compassion. As well as protective emotions like anger and anxiety, the brain is also designed to create kindness and understanding.
If we focus on activating this compassionate part of our brain we can actually teach our mind to react in new ways. In CFT, this is called “Compassionate Mind Training”.
Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is designed to help those who suffer from high levels of self-criticism and shame. It helps you to learn how to feel kinder towards yourself and others, and to feel safe and capable in a world that can seem overwhelming.
Founded by British clinical psychologist Paul Raymond Gilbert, CFT uses research and tools not just from psychology, but also from evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and Buddhism.
How is Compassion-focused therapy different from other kinds of therapy? It’s true that all talk therapies involve compassion, and that the very nature of therapy is that that you learn to be nicer to yourself. All psychotherapists work to show you understanding and empathy.
It’s also true that Compassion-focused therapy utilises tools and techniques that other forms of therapy do, such as monitoring your thoughts and feelings and looking at your past. But Compassion-focused therapy puts a greater focus than other approaches do on consciously developing your ability to feel and act compassionately and kindly towards yourself and others.
To understand how Compassion-focused therapy is different, it can help to look at what inspired its development in the first place. Founder Paul Raymond Gilbert worked with clients with complex mental health challenges who often had backgrounds that involved neglect, abuse, and trauma. He noticed many of these clients suffered a very high level of shame and self-criticism that didn’t improve with cognitive therapy only. In other words, therapies that helped Gilbert’s clients understand their negative thoughts and behaviours didn’t make them actually feel better.
Gilbert began to realise that his clients needed emotional resources as well. They needed tools to be able to soothe themselves and experience inner peace. So CFT was developed to help create positive emotional responses in those who suffered with a low sense of worth.
Compassion-focused therapy doesn’t have to be used by itself, and is often used alongside other types of therapy. For example, a Cognitive behavioural therapist or a Person-centred counsellor might also integrate Compassion-focussed therapy into their work with clients.
Who is Compassion-focused therapy suitable for?
Compassion-focused therapy helps anyone who struggles with the following issues:
- deep feelings of shame
- an unrelenting inner critic
- a history of emotional or physical abuse including neglect and bullying
- an inability to feel kind towards themselves
- difficulty believing the world is a safe place
- anxiety and possibly panic attacks due to feeling life is threatening
- find it hard to trust others
Compassion-focused therapy may help with the following mental health challenges:
- self-esteem issues
- severe and chronic depression
- anxiety and/or panic attacks
- eating disorders
The evolutionary psychology behind CFT
Compassion-focussed therapy looks at the way we have more than one ‘brain’. The ‘old’ brain, which we share with all animals, helps us take care of our needs. These includes not only food and shelter and a desire to be loved, but also our personal safety. We all have an inbuilt defence system that causes our ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ reaction. The ‘old’ brain gives all animals basic emotions like anxiety, anger, neediness, and sadness.
But somewhere along the line, as humans, we then also developed a ‘new’ brain that allows us to have a distinct sense of self and to visualise and imagine. We can choose how we want to feel and how we want to live and come up with ideas we then make happen. These are all things other animals cannot do.
The problem with our ‘new’ brains is that they they can get mixed up with the ‘old’ brain in ways that cause us problems. The basic emotions and drives of the old brain can take over the new brain, using it’s creative force to stir up primal and protective emotions. For example, imagine you bump into an ex who is with a new partner and seems very happy. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity to visualise your own future in a partnership that makes you happy, you might be filled with anxiety and anger and start thinking of ways you can punish your ex for not being so happy when with you. You might even start writing an angry letter in your head. Your old brain, feeling threatened, starts using your new brain to do its work.
Why does this evolutionary theory matter? The positive side is that when we understand the whys and hows of our brain’s behaviour, we can learn to notice and change the way we think. Therapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as well as Mindfulness-based therapies focus on just this sort of thought recognition and re-focusing.
What Compassion-focussed therapy also brings into the picture is two things. The first is to let go of self blame for having such negative thoughts. Nobody chooses to have a brain that creates angst. But our brains evolved to be reactionary, it’s simply the way they are designed. The second idea that we can also then choose not just to generate new thought patterns, but also to generate certain emotions that can help us, such as compassion. As well as protective emotions like anger and anxiety, the brain is also designed to create kindness and understanding.
If we focus on activating this compassionate part of our brain we can actually teach our mind to react in new ways. In CFT, this is called “Compassionate Mind Training”.