Secrets of Compassion Focused Therapy
Channel: Doc Snipes
Date: 2016-10-06

Compassion Focused Therapy is ideal for those who need help being loving and forgiving toward themselves and others.
#compassion  #traumainformed  #selfhelp 

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#CEU #mentalhealth #compassionfocusedtherapy

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Compassion
~    The healing properties of compassion have been written about for centuries.
~    The Dalai Lama stresses that if you want others to be happy, or to be happy yourself – focus on compassion
~    Compassion can be thought of as a skill that one can train in.
~    Focusing on and practicing compassion can influence neurophysiological and immune systems
~    Compassionate mind training refers to specific activities designed to develop compassionate attributes and skills, particularly those that influence affect regulation
Observations About Compassion
~    Compassion-focused therapy and compassionate mind training arose from a number of observations.
~    First, people with high levels of shame and self-criticism can have enormous difficulty in being kind to themselves, feeling self-warmth or being self-compassionate.
~    Psychological consequences?
~    Physical consequences
~    Social consequences?
Observations About Compassion
~    Second
~    Problems of shame and self-criticism are often rooted in histories of abuse, bullying, high expressed emotion in the family, neglect and/or lack of affection
~    Imagine growing up in this family
~    What do you, the child want? —But you don’t get it.
~    What does this teach you about the world
~    Individuals subjected to early experiences of this type can become highly sensitive to threats of rejection or criticism from the outside world and can quickly become self-attacking (egocentric child) or defensive and aggressive
Observations About Compassion
~    Third, it has been recognized that working with shame and self-criticism requires a therapeutic focus on memories of such early experiences (similar to trauma work)
~    Fourth, some clients become skilled at generating alternatives for their negative thoughts and beliefs, but still do poorly in therapy.
~    I identify the logical fallacy, but it doesn’t make me feel any better

Key Element
~    Individuals prone to high levels of shame and self-criticism can find it very difficult to generate feelings of contentment, safeness or warmth in their relationships with others and themselves.
~    Psychological consequences?
~    Physical consequences
~    Social consequences?
~    Threat and protection
~    All living things have evolved with basic threat-detection/protection systems (survival)
~    The behavioral outputs include fight, flight and submission
~    Sensitized schemas and strategies for threat detection and protection can become major influences on the ways in which a person perceives and navigates their world.
~    The clinician will identify, historically plot and validate the functions and origins of safety strategies (partly to de-shame them)
~    In compassion-focused therapy the focus is on understanding the functions of a person’s symptoms and difficulties in terms of safety strategies
~    Drive and excitement
~    Animals need emotion and motivational systems that direct them towards important rewards and resources.
~    The function of the drive and excitement system in humans is to give us positive feelings that energize and motivate us to seek out things (e.g. food, sex, friendships)
~    If people take cocaine or amphetamine this is the system they are likely to stimulate.
Brain System Conflict
~    The drive system and the threat protection system can be linked in complex ways
~    Avoid negative events, which shows up in thoughts of ‘shoulds’, ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’.
~    Working to avoid rejection
~    Doing things we shouldn’t
~    Status Seeking (Wealth, power, (status))

Brain Systems
~    The contentment system
~    When animals are not threatened and not seeking resources they can become content
~    Contentment is associated with a positive ‘calm’, positive affects and sense of well-being; contentment is not just the absence of threat

0:00 Introduction
0:36 Objectives
4:58 Observations About Compassion
11:03 Key Element
13:03 Brain Systems
17:42 Brain System Conflict
21:04 Contentment cont...
24:51 The attributes of compassion
35:52 Compassionate Behavior
38:45 Compassion-Focused Therapy
40:45 Compassionate Imagery
44:53 Compassionate Sensation
51:22 Summary
53:39 For More Guidance