There is no one “cognitive behavioral therapy.” The term “CBT” represents a family of therapies, that share a commitment to scientific excellence in the alleviation and prevention of suffering…

What this means to you, is that psychologists who practice CBT are using an approach that has research-based effectiveness for the treatment of a range of problems.

The therapies that are “members of this family” also have some differences.

Some therapies, like Cognitive Therapy, often aim to help clients directly change the way that they are thinking so that they might have a more rational, positive, or functional outlook.

Other types of therapy, like traditional Behavior Therapy, for example, use very direct methods of confronting feared situations to help people overcome phobias and other problems.

Over the last decade, a quiet revolution has taken place in the sciences of the mind and psychotherapy . . .and this is what it looks like.

Compassion Focused Therapy

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is an innovative, integrated psychological therapy developed in the UK that promotes a evolutionary and bio-psycho-social approach to compassion. It has rapidly gained support as a powerful way of working with common life difficulties, emotional distress and a variety of mental health problems.

There are often misconceptions about what compassion is.  Compassion, as used in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), involves being sensitive to our own or other people’s distress, and learning how to skillfully alleviate this.  In CFT we help people develop self-compassion; at the heart of this is learning how we can treat ourselves in a way that we would a good friend, or family member.

Eastern mind training traditions and Western psychology have come together in an unprecedented way, allowing the development of advanced new psychotherapies.

Concepts such as mindfulness, acceptance and compassion, which were once typically associated with Eastern meditative practices are now central therapeutic concepts that are being researched all over the world.

This research is taking place using cutting edge neuro-imaging techniques, experimental behavioral research, and randomized controlled trials of new forms of psychotherapy. The result of this burgeoning line of scientific inquiry is an ongoing advancement in how we can better treat psychological and behavioral problems.

The primary form of CBT that is emphasized at Wise Mind is Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). Below, I’ve provided a brief description of this approach.

How can CFT help?

CFT has been shown to effectively treat long-term emotional problems including anxiety disorders, mood disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders, hoarding disorder, and psychosis by addressing patterns of shame and self-criticism, which can significantly contribute to mental health issues. 

Research suggests that humans have at least three different emotion regulation systems: a threat and self-protection system, which generates anger, disgust, or fear to protect us; a drive and excitement system, which motivates us to seek outside resources like mates, food, and status; and a soothing and social safety system, which is activated when we feel peaceful and content enough that we are no longer compelled to seek outside resources. 

Mental illness can result, in part, from an imbalance between these three systems. People high in shame and self-criticism may not have had enough stimulation of their soothing system early in life, and too much stimulation of their threat system. As a result, they can struggle to be kind to themselves or feel kindness from others. They may be highly sensitive to criticism or rejection, whether real or perceived, and internalize that disapproval. The goal of CFT is to correct this imbalance in the emotion regulation systems.

Shame and self-criticism make things difficult for people with a range of different problems. People who intensely experience them may struggle to feel relieved, reassured or safe. This lack of emotional safeness can cause difficulty in living rewarding lives.

Research suggests that a specialized emotion regulation system underpins feelings of reassurance, safeness and well-being. It is believed to have evolved with human attachment systems and, in particular, with the ability to register and respond with calming and a sense of well-being to being cared for. We experience this emotion system as a felt sense of compassion. This compassion can be directed at others, but it also can be aimed towards ourselves.

In CFT it is hypothesized that this emotion regulation system is poorly accessible in people with high shame and self-criticism, in whom the ‘threat detection’ based emotion regulation system dominates their orientation to their inner and outer worlds.

CFT is an integrated and multimodal approach that draws from evolutionary, social, developmental and Buddhist psychology and neuroscience. One of its key concerns is to use compassionate mind training to help people develop and work with experiences of inner warmth, safeness and soothing, via compassion and self-compassion.

(Above adapted from the writings of CFT founder, Paul Gilbert)