Compassion-Focused Therapy: What It Is and Who It Is For

Having compassion for yourself and others is an important part of mental wellness. But some people struggle with this due to low self-esteem, guilt, or other mental health concerns. Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) offers a way to work on developing kinder, more adaptive ways to think of one’s self and interact with others in order to improve mental well-being. 

CFT uses several techniques to accomplish this. Knowing more about this type of therapeutic approach, including its benefits and principles, can help you better understand how it works — and how it may help you. 

Below, we’ll explore CFT in greater detail, from what it is to what to consider before doing this type of therapy. 

What is compassion-focused therapy (CFT)?

CFT is a newer kind of therapeutic approach used for helping people with mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and psychosis. Psychologist Paul Gilbert developed CFT in the early 21st century as a way to help people build self-compassion and compassion for others. 

It isn’t part of a specific “school of therapy,” such as psychoanalysis or cognitivism. Instead, researchers have proposed using it as a more holistic or multi-modal therapy that includes various evidence-based approaches and techniques. 

CFT includes elements of different psychological fields, such as evolutionary psychology, social psychology, clinical psychology, and neuropsychology. It involves learning to balance the brain’s emotion regulation systems, including the drive system, soothing system, and threat system.  

Benefits of compassion-focused therapy

Since its founding in the early 2000s, CFT has been studied to determine how effective it is and what kinds of benefits it offers. Research has shown that the psychotherapeutic benefits of compassion-focused therapy include: 

Increased self-compassion

If you have a hard time being kind to yourself, CFT can help you work on developing greater self-compassion. Through exercises and techniques, this type of therapy helps change maladaptive or negative self-talk or thoughts into kinder ones. 

Increasing self-compassion helps improve how you view yourself. These changes may help raise self-esteem and self-confidence and decrease self-doubt and self-criticism.  

Having more compassion for yourself can also help you become more resilient when you face stress or challenges. For example, instead of assuming you can’t handle a difficult situation, having more adaptive self-talk helps you feel more confident. 

Alleviation of shame and guilt 

CFT has been shown to help individuals who struggle with feelings of guilt and/or shame. Learning to be kinder toward yourself helps you work on being able to forgive yourself for past mistakes and move on. CFT can also help with processing shame or guilt over situations or events that were beyond your control or that weren’t your fault. 

A 2019 study found that compassion-focused imagery, a technique used in CFT, helped ease shame. In fact, participants had significant decreases in shame from recalled memories.  

CFT helps promote self-acceptance and understanding while decreasing shame and guilt. This type of therapy can help you learn to better understand and accept yourself, including your limitations and flaws. 

Reduction of mental health disorder symptoms

Studies show that CFT helps reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions. Learning to accept one’s self and increasing self-compassion may help ease feelings of hopelessness for those with depression. 

Based on a 2020 review, CFT can even help reduce symptoms of conditions that are harder to treat, such as eating disorders. This review also notes that a minimum of 12 sessions are needed to significantly decrease mental health symptoms in all populations. 

Improved emotional regulation 

Being able to manage emotions, especially strong ones, can be difficult without compassion. For example, someone who struggles with anger and has low self-compassion might criticize themselves harshly after losing their temper. This vicious cycle of anger and self-criticism then continues, impacting their mental well-being. 

CFT helps enhance the ability to regulate emotions, including intense ones. Building self-compassion, working on self-acceptance, and gaining greater understanding of one’s self may make it easier to handle emotions in more adaptive ways. For example, the individual who struggles with anger can learn to self-soothe through CFT — rather than losing their temper and berating themselves. 

Compassion-focused therapy vs. cognitive behavioral therapy 

CFT and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are similar to some extent — both aim at helping individuals develop more adaptive or positive ways of thinking — but their approaches differ. 

CFT focuses on helping people increase self-compassion, self-acceptance, self-respect, and similar qualities. There’s a greater emphasis on the emotions behind self-critical thinking. 

CBT focuses on helping people identify and change maladaptive thought patterns, such as black-and-white thinking or catastrophizing (assuming the worst-case scenario will happen). 

If you struggle with shame, for example, CFT can help you work on understanding why you feel that way, being kinder to yourself, and accepting yourself. CBT, on the other hand, helps you identify thought patterns that may be contributing to feelings of shame. It teaches you how to reframe them or replace them with more adaptive thinking patterns. 

Paul Gilbert founded CFT to help individuals with more severe self-criticism or feelings of shame who didn’t respond as well to CBT. For these individuals, CBT wasn’t as effective at achieving lasting results. 

Who can benefit from compassion-focused therapy?

Everyone can benefit from working on developing greater self-compassion and compassion for others. But for those with mental health challenges, doing this without guidance can be difficult. CFT research shows that this type of therapy may be helpful for those who have the following mental health concerns or conditions:

• Depression
• Anxiety disorders
• Low self-esteem
• Eating disorders
• Psychosis 
• Stress 
• Addiction
• Personality disorders
• Shame and/or guilt 
• Trauma 

Note that this isn’t an exhaustive list. CFT may also benefit individuals who have other mental health disorders. 

Core principles and techniques used in compassion-focused therapy 

As a multi-modal therapy, CFT uses various interventions and techniques to help individuals increase compassion. It also incorporates several concepts related to compassion from different psychological fields, along with Buddhist traditions and neuroscience. In the following sections, we’ll go over some of the core principles and techniques that are part of CFT.

Compassionate mind training (CMT)

CMT is a central part of CFT. It helps individuals develop skills and attributes needed for increasing compassion, such as empathy and distress tolerance. Different exercises are used to achieve compassion training, including:

• Appreciation exercises and activities that focus on things an individual enjoys, such as keeping a gratitude journal 
• Mindfulness practices, such as meditation, mindful breathing, and mindful movement  
• Compassionate imagery exercises, like visualizing another person, animal, or object that offers you compassion in order to help you feel safe and accepted 
• Compassionate letter writing or writing about an event or struggle you endured from a self-compassionate view 

Focus on self-compassion during negative thought processes

CFT emphasizes treating yourself with compassion and kindness when experiencing unhelpful or maladaptive thought processes, such as thinking you always do things wrong or blaming yourself when something happens. 

These thought processes may lead you to engage in harsh self-criticism or experience deep feelings of shame or guilt. Focusing on self-compassion during these times can help you shift to a more adaptive and accepting way of thinking about yourself.

Nurturing compassion within the self 

Compassion doesn’t develop overnight, especially for those who have struggled with shame or self-attacking for years. Instead, it’s a gradual process that involves nurturing compassion within yourself. 

CFT uses different exercises and activities for accomplishing this, such as visualizing yourself as a compassionate person with empathy, wisdom, and similar qualities. Other exercises involve focusing on observing your “troubled self” through the view of your compassionate self. 

Multi-modal approach 

CFT uses techniques and exercises from other therapies, such as mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy. This flexibility makes it a comprehensive approach to helping individuals who struggle with various mental health concerns. 

Clinicians can tailor the specific exercises and activities used to best suit each client’s needs. CFT may also be used as a starting point to help individuals overcome or manage guilt, shame, self-criticism, or similar feelings before moving on to another type of therapy, such as CBT, attention and commitment therapy (ACT), or schema-focused therapy. 

Considerations for CFT

Before going through CFT with a mental health professional, it’s helpful to consider a few factors first. As a newer type of therapy, CFT still needs more large-scale studies done to determine how effective it is across diverse populations. 

In addition, CFT doesn’t focus on fast resolution of mental health concerns like solution-focused therapy does. Instead, it’s a gradual process that may take a longer time to achieve results. 

Having a strong therapeutic alliance with your therapist is key, so it’s important that they don’t skip relationship-building exercises and other practices that help establish a rapport. This alliance will impact how successful CFT is for you. 

Connect with a therapist with SonderMind 

If feelings of shame and guilt or harsh self-criticism are affecting your quality of life, CFT might offer a solution. Learning to accept yourself and treat yourself with greater compassion may help improve symptoms and boost your overall mental well-being. 

SonderMind can help you connect with a therapist who fits your needs, allowing you to form a strong therapeutic alliance and achieve your therapy goals.