Compassion Focused Therapy
– CFT –
What?
While Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is primarily focused on thinking and behaviour change, Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) looks at the emotion behind people’s thoughts.
For?
This therapy is suitable for people who have high levels of shame and self-criticism and who have difficulty in feeling warmth toward, and being kind to, themselves or others. You may have tried CBT, understood alternative perspectives but do not feel this evidence in your hearts. This ‘head-heart lag’ occurs mostly when we have no experiences of nurturing to draw on.
How?
CFT integrates techniques from CBT with concepts from evolutionary psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, Buddhist psychology and neuroscience. It is used to help people develop and work with experiences of inner warmth, safeness and soothing, via compassion and self-compassion. Through tackling the self-criticism and replacing it with kindness, patients then judge themselves and their lives less harshly and therefore feel happier.
Where?
CFT is appropriate to try in any of Smart CBT+’s locations. We can use it during a session in one of the relaxing therapy cabins, as part of Walking Talking Therapy in a local park, or with online or phone therapy.
The psychology
Compassionate mind training helps transform problematic patterns of cognition and emotion related to depression, anxiety, anger, shame and self-criticism. Humans have evolved with at least three primal emotion regulation systems:
the threat (protection) system
the drive (resource-seeking) system
the soothing system
CFT emphasises the links between cognitive patterns and these three emotion regulation systems, teaching how to manage each system more effectively and respond more appropriately to situations.