Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)

Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) aims to help promote mental and emotional healing by encouraging people in treatment to be compassionate toward themselves and other people. Compassion, both toward the self and toward others, is an emotional response believed by many to be an essential aspect of well-being. Its development may often have the benefit of improved mental and emotional health.

At Working Minds, we provide CFT as a current understanding of basic emotion regulation systems: the threat and self-protection system, the drive and excitement system, and the contentment and social safeness system. Treatment sessions highlight the association between these systems and human thought and behaviour. Our aim of establishing CFT is to bring these three affect systems into balance.

According to CFT theory, the threat, drive, and contentment systems evolved throughout human history in order to facilitate survival. Early humans were eager to avoid or overcome threats, seek resources such as food or intimacy, and enjoy the benefits of being part of a social community. Proponents of CFT suggest these systems are still active and affect human emotions, actions, and beliefs today. If a threatening stimulus is received, for example, a person may experience different feelings (such as fear, anxiety, or anger), exhibit various behaviours (submission or a fight or flight response), and develop certain cognitive biases (jumping to conclusions, stereotyping, or assuming it is always better to be safe than sorry).

CFT can be helpful to people who find it challenging to understand, feel, or express compassion, as therapy can be a safe place in which to discover any reasons behind this difficulty and explore methods of positive change. This type of therapy can also be effective at helping people manage distressing thoughts, behaviours, and feelings of any kind but may be particularly helpful when dealing with feelings associated with self-attack.

Other concerns treated with CFT include:

• Anger
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Disordered eating
• Psychosis
• Self-criticism
• Self-injury
• Shame

At Working Minds, we will first assess you to see if this approach is a good fit for your particular challenges you are experiencing. CFT can help individuals achieve improved well-being overall but may not be the most relevant approach for some mental health issues.