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Compassion focused therapy definition: According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, compassion is a “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it”. Furthermore, compassion may be synonymous with both empathy and sympathy. There are other definitions of compassion. Scholars have tried to expand the meaning of the word compassion. For instance, Compassion has three dimensions including being mindful of other people’s distress, being kind and having an “awareness of sharing experiences” .

Distinctive Features of Compassion Focused Therapy

The majority of therapies use similar techniques and work on the same issues, or focus on the same goals, but compassion focused therapy has some distinctive features related only to it.

CFT is a model that derived from different branches of psychology (developmental, social, neurosciences, and evolutionary psychology). Also, it is an approach that considered both eastern and western philosophies to help people overcome their self-criticism. Modern western psychotherapy combined with Buddhist philosophy and its spiritual traditions in order to contribute to enhancing compassion focused therapy.

CFT showed the existence of the interactional view in the brain, and this view confirmed that the brain is organized to control some mentalities and emotions while neglecting others. In order to do that, malfunctioning links can be created in the brain and lead to improve the threat system and damage the compassionate mind.

Paul Gilbert defined the idea of social mentalities that make people engage in relationships with others. For example, sex: people seek to have sex because they need to have pleasure, reduce stress, or be attractive to a loved person.

Competition and social rank: may cause mental health issues due to two reasons. First, they engage people in contests and conflicts over scarce resources. There are winners and losers; a win-lose eventuality may be beneficial to winners but detrimental to the losers. Since winning in human relations is associated with assertiveness and control, the alternative is losing, which is associated with “dysphoria and anxiety” . Then, secondly, competition causes mental health issues because it creates social ranks. These ranks have an immense effect on people’s mental health. Social hierarchies may cause tribal violence especially towards external groups; Then, social hierarchies are associated with dominance over a given population.

Nurturing and caring: is another social mentality that significantly affects the processing systems. Gilbert (2010) points out that “ self-care is central to life itself.”The competencies for caring for each other includes compassion and being proactive especially in social circles. Human caring utilizes the “empathetic/sympathetic competencies”. When a person offers empathy, he or she feels that he or she is valuable. In contrast, when someone feels that he has nothing to offer, they may feel left out, and their self-esteem may suffer as a result. It is also worthy to note that the critical competency of nurturing and care is compassion.

Compassion (both self - and other-focused)''could be the key to relieving intrusive feelings of shame and self-criticism'' Paul Gilbert

Brain Systems

According to the Evolutionary theory, compassion therapy considered that humans have two brains, the old brain and the new brain. The old brain is the one that humans share with other animals, as it is responsible for giving humans the essential needs and emotions like (anger, anxiety, and fear). It has a defensive system to activate our fight or flight and freezing reaction.

New brain is the one developed from first relationships with others and the interactions with the environment. It allows us to have the sense of self, imagine, and select how we want to feel and how we like to live. It also helps to come up with new ideas and then implement them.

The issue with our brains is that they get mixed sometimes and cause us problems. The old brain has the power to influence and control the new brain and stabilize the primitive and protective emotions such as anxiety, shyness, and anger.

Paul Gilbert is the founder of Compassion Focused Therapy.

The Brain’s Emotion Regulation System

In human beings, emotions have a variety of complex functions . Evolution has made a big impact on the role of emotions. Understanding the role of emotions is essential in understanding and treating medical disorders associated with emotions. In the context of compassion based therapy, the emotion regulation system comprises of drive System, threat system, and sooth system .

The drive system is a positive emotion regulation system. Because humans have to meet biosocial demands, our biosocial goals are controlled by emotions. The drive system is usually activated when humans successfully achieve their biosocial goals .

The threat system is another illustration of an emotion regulation system. This system is problematic in a two-fold manner. Firstly, threats may lead people to seek validation . Moreover, seeking validation is a defensive mechanism for people under threat. Seeking validation is detrimental because it puts people under pressure to perform. Then, secondly, people may also engage in activities to compensate for the areas where they lack. Such behaviors are unhelpful ways of regulating emotions.

The sooth system is another crucial element of the brain’s emotional regulation system. The sooth system, in the context of compassion focused therapy, is crucial in trying to understand the emotion regulation system . soothing and balancing our emotions is related to compassion . A good illustration of a soothing feeling is when someone can make a social reference of his or her feelings. For instance, when a mother, who has lost a child, is in a group of mothers, who share the same circumstances, she is likely to feel more at ease . A complex example of a social reference is“common humanity” . Many processes can mitigate threat systems and in turn activate soothing. Such processes include living in the minds of others, understanding and hearing others, empathetic validation and insight.

Developing the compassionate mind in action

There are six elements that show changes happen when we refocus on developing compassionate mind after the threatened mind already switching on and feelings of anxiety and shyness in the social events.

Compassionate thinking and reasoning work on understanding that shyness and anxiety is a common feeling with people when they are in any social events, parties, or interviews and none of us selected to have tricky brain according to the evolutionary theory. We also should remember shyness is not always bad, it has some positive aspects.

Compassionate Behavior is focusing on learning to engage and face things even if we are scared. It also motivates us to learn about the problematic anxiety and social shyness and find strategies to cope. Moreover, in situations of social occasions or job interviews, compassionate behavior push us to develop public speaking skills.

Compassionate emotions focus more on feelings of kindness, supporting, connecting, and soothing toward self and others. The emotions we make can massively affect our thoughts and we can hear them in our minds whenever we need them to support others and ourselves in hard situations.

Compassionate motives help in contributing to relieve the anxiety and frighten suffering. It encourages us to be honest with ourselves and think about our important values and how can we achieve them. Also, it gives us the full space to determine what person we want to be and how can get that. It is about listening to our inner desire and gets rid of suffering.

Compassionate imagery or fantasy: it is very easy to build bad and frightening images when criticizing ourselves and feel anxious, but we can make deliberate efforts to create new positive images in our minds. In this case, we stimulate the soothing system that works in supporting, loving, warmth and kindness.

Compassionate attention depends on the kind of imagery we made in our minds because imagery affects what we pay attention to, what we feel, and how we behave. For example, if we were hungry and we imagine food then the stomach acid would be stimulated. The same thing if we image doing sex our bodies will react to that.

Conceptualisations of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a mind state characterised by a blend of attention, awareness, and memory . Based on third Wave CBT and Buddhist practice, mindfulness can be achieved by different techniques, primarily including meditation, movement, and yoga exercises. Even though the practices above are crucial in mindfulness training, there are other essential elements. In other words, Mindfulness is a way of being. Mindfulness is relating to the operation of the body and mind; it goes beyond the skills acquired by exercises . Mindfulness can ease removal of ''stereotyped perception'', which in turn leads to a more accurate experience of living .

For training the mind, it is essential to distinguish between experiencing experience and being aware of awareness. Focusing attention and living in the present is a crucial element of mindfulness. Moreover, mindfulness is helpful in circumstances where people avoid feeling some emotions . Mindfulness also helps in preventing the ill effects of rumination. Furthermore, not only does mindfulness help people to deal with who they are but also to accept themselves.

Compassion Focused Therapy Exercises

There are many compassion exercises. These exercises include compassionate colors, the compassionate self, compassionate flowing out, focusing the compassionate self on others, compassion flowing into oneself, using memory focusing the compassionate Self on yourself, and creating a humane ideal .Developing the inner compassionate self-exercises focus on creating a sense of compassion akin to actors why try to get into a role . Compassion flowing out from you to others exercises focus on filling minds with compassionate emotions for other people .

References

Category:Behavioural sciences