Introducing Experiencing Compassion-Focused Therapy from the Inside Out

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

— His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

We (Russell, Tobyn, and Chris) were excited when James invited us to join him in creating a self-practice/self-reflection (SP/SR) book focused on compassion-focused therapy (CFT). A growing body of scientific research supports the value of compassion in working with mental health issues and in building happy lives, so naturally there is also a rapidly growing increase in clinicians who want to learn how to integrate compassion practices into their work with clients. Recent years have seen the development of resources to help therapists do just this. However, if you spend much time chatting with CFT therapists or others whose work focuses on compassion or mindfulness, you will hear them say time and time again, "If you're going to teach compassion or mindfulness, you need to practice it yourself." This statement conveys an increasing awareness — reflected in a growing body of scientific literature — that therapist SP/SR can deepen and enhance therapeutic work in a number of important ways across therapy models. The goal of this book is exactly that: to help you learn the fundamental experiences of CFT from the inside out, by cultivating, applying, and reflecting upon them in your own life.

A Brief Orientation to CFT

When you tell people that your area of therapist specialization is compassion-focused therapy, you're likely to get one of two reactions. The first (often spoken with raised eyebrows) is "Compassion ... that's nice. We all need more compassion, don't we?" The second sort of response (often spoken in a really excited voice) sounds more like this: "Compassion-focused therapy! Me too! I've been doing that my whole career. Compassion is soooo important!" Both of these responses are based in the assumption that compassion-focused therapy, abbreviated CFT, simply involves doing therapy, well, compassionately.

Although embodying compassion in the therapy room certainly is a part of CFT (as we hope it would be in any therapy), it is much more than this. CFT was developed by Paul Gilbert in response to observations that many patients who struggled to benefit from traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) approaches seemed to spend lots of time captured in patterns of shame and self-attacking. We can think of CFT as a "therapy model," but it's really more of an attempt to integrate what science tells us about what it means to be a human being, how and why we struggle, and how we can help people relate to their struggles in helpful, effective ways. In doing so, CFT draws heavily on multiple bodies of science as well as on wisdom traditions such as Buddhism. We draw from evolutionary psychology approaches in understanding the tricky ways that evolution has shaped our brains — ways that set us up for certain difficulties almost from the start. We draw from the evidence indicating that early attachment experiences can powerfully shape how we develop and how we learn to relate to ourselves and other people. We draw from affective neuroscience research that informs us about how our emotions and motives operate in our brains and minds, powerfully shaping our experience of life. We draw from behavioral and cognitive traditions that inform powerful technologies of change. And we also draw directly from traditions such as Buddhism, which have spent thousands of years exploring how practices of compassion and mindfulness can be cultivated in the service of building happy, healthy lives, communities, and civilizations (Gilbert, 2010).

Our Approach

A number of valuable books have been written on how these various influences are made manifest in CFT. The art of CFT involves bringing these influences alive in the form of basic human realizations and understandings, inspiring the courage our clients need to turn toward their struggles with kindness and commitment, and helping them cultivate a repertoire of compassionate strengths to draw upon in working with the inevitable challenges of having a human life. That's the...