This training will introduce participants to the basic ideas and interventions used in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). CFT was originally developed with people with high shame and self-criticism. These individuals often come from difficult backgrounds where there are low levels of affiliation and affection. This is problematic because from infancy onwards attachment and affiliative experiences play a major role in brain development and regulation of threat-based emotion. Indeed, individuals from these backgrounds can find experiencing positive, affiliative emotions (accepting compassion and being self-compassionate) difficult. This training will explore the role of the evolution of mammalian attachment and affiliation in threat regulation with a focus on the complexity of threat processing systems and its regulation through affiliative processing.

It will outline how problems in affiliative processing have major implications for threat processing and how therapies can begin to formulate those difficulties and develop treatment plans.

Participants will learn to focus on the forms and functions of shame and self-criticism and how to treat them by developing self and other directed compassion. CFT aims to develop care and affiliative-focused motivation, attention, emotion behaviour and thinking. Key skills include the use of compassion focused imagery, building the compassionate self and using the sense of a compassionate self to engage with areas of personal difficulty. The training will use a range of PowerPoint presentations, DVD presentations and some limited personal practice.

The training is suitable for all those who are trained in being able to form and develop psychotherapeutic relationships; have basic counselling skills and preferably have basic CBT skills.