compassion-focused therapy

Bringing compassion into therapy is about helping effectively, not just about feeling helpful. In this way, science is core to compassion, and the CFT therapist is likely to draw upon any tools that have good science behind them. In fact, a core value of CFT therapists is not ignoring good science. So if you want to do CFT, you don’t have to give up any of the things you already do that work.

Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) is rooted in a scientific explanation of how our brains have become the way they are through the history of human evolution. From this foundational understanding, CFT focuses on the purposeful cultivation of compassion, the skills and strengths that flow from it, and how to use them to work effectively with human suffering.

Editor’s note: The following is a Q&A with Dennis Tirch, PhD, and Laura Silberstein, PhD, co-authors along with Benjamin Schoendorff, MA, MSc of The ACT Practitioner’s Guide to the Science of Compassion: Tools for Fostering Psychological Flexibility. Tirch and Silberstein have collaborated on all responses.