Summary: <p>Compassion Focused Therapy<br> Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes<br> Executive Director, AllCEUs</p> <p>Continuing Education credits can be earned for this course at: <a href="https://www.allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/578/c/">https://www.allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/578/c/</a><br> Objectives<br> ~ Define CFT<br> ~ Explore the underlying theory<br> ~ Identify techniques used in CFT and their rationale<br> ~ Theorize about how CFT might be helpful to your clients<br> Compassion<br> ~ The healing properties of compassion have been written about for centuries.<br> ~ The Dalai Lama stresses that if you want others to be happy, or to be happy yourself – focus on compassion<br> ~ Compassion can be thought of as a skill that one can train in.<br> ~ Focusing on and practicing compassion can influence neurophysiological and immune systems<br> ~ Compassionate mind training refers to specific activities designed to develop compassionate attributes and skills, particularly those that influence affect regulation<br> Observations About Compassion<br> ~ Compassion-focused therapy and compassionate mind training arose from a number of observations.<br> ~ 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.<br> ~ Psychological consequences?<br> ~ Physical consequences<br> ~ Social consequences?</p> <p>Observations About Compassion<br> ~ Second<br> ~ 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<br> ~ Imagine growing up in this family<br> ~ What do you, the child want? —But you don’t get it.<br> ~ What does this teach you about the world<br> ~ 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<br> Observations About Compassion<br> ~ 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)<br> ~ Fourth, some clients become skilled at generating alternatives for their negative thoughts and beliefs, but still do poorly in therapy.<br> ~ I identify the logical fallacy, but it doesn’t make me feel any better</p> <p>Key Element<br> ~ 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.<br> ~ Psychological consequences?<br> ~ Physical consequences<br> ~ Social consequences?</p> <p>Brain Systems<br> ~ Threat and protection<br> ~ All living things have evolved with basic threat-detection/protection systems (survival)<br> ~ The behavioral outputs include fight, flight and submission<br> ~ 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.<br> ~ The clinician will identify, historically plot and validate the functions and origins of safety strategies (partly to de-shame them)<br> ~ In compassion-focused therapy the focus is on understanding the functions of a person’s symptoms and difficulties in terms of safety strategies<br> Brain Systems<br> ~ Drive and excitement<br> ~ Animals need emotion and motivational systems that direct them towards important rewards and resources.<br> ~ 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)<br> ~ If people take cocaine</p>
