Compassion Focus Therapy
FOCUS
The focus of the workshop is to facilitate therapists' understanding of CFT as a multi-layered process in which every aspect of the therapeutic interaction helps to shape, support, and strengthen clients' capacity to helpfully engage with their suffering and struggles in a direct and courageous way.
Leaning objective
1) Participants will be able to identify and describe the 4 layered processes and practices in CFT.
2) Participants will be able to describe the various roles of the therapist in CFT.
3) Participants will be able to describe different types of compassionate realizations that clients are guided to make in CFT and the anti-shaming function of these realizations.
4) Participants will become familiar with some compassionate mindfulness training practices.
Duration: 8 hours
WHAT'S INCLUDED
This 4 seminar series will present the clinical practice of compassion-centered therapy as a set of layered processes and practices:
- the therapeutic relationship in CFT;
- compassionate realizations that enable clients to understand and relate to their lived experience in compassionate and shameless ways;
- compassionate awareness facilitation that helps clients relate to their difficult experiences with gentle curiosity rather than judgment and condemnation;
- and an introduction to compassionate mindfulness training practices.
In the first session, participants will be presented with a paradigm for understanding CFT as a set of layered processes and practices that capture both the activities of the therapist in CFT and the process-level changes that CFT strives to facilitate in clients. This session will also explain the various roles played by the therapist in CFT and how embodying these roles helps set the stage for self-compassion in our clients.
Russel Kolts
CFT is designed to treat clients with deeply embedded shame, but research shows that such clients may have difficulty initially taking advantage of traditional compassion training practices. In this second session, we will explore CFT's use of compassionate pathways against shame to help clients shift their understanding of their challenges from criticism and avoidance to compassionate understanding.
Russel Kolts
In the third session we will explore the role of compassionate awareness in CFT, to help clients learn to relate to their lived experiences with gentle curiosity rather than judgment and condemnation. We will also introduce some compassionate mindfulness training practices that can help clients prepare the ground for compassion.
Russel Kolts
In this final session, we will examine compassionate mindfulness training, which involves a collection of practices thoughtfully designed to help clients intentionally cultivate compassion and the various skills associated with it, both more generally and in relation to specific "difficult" emotions.
Russel Kolts
