Compassion-focused therapy

WEBINARS: Compassion-focused therapy with Paul Gilbert

Date: Saturday 20 February & Saturday 27 February 2021

Time: 8.30am - 12.00pm each Saturday (both sessions will be recorded and available for viewing for the next 12 months to paying registrants)

Prof Paul Gilbert PhD OBE hosts these workshops that offer insights into the nature of compassion and the types and uses of practices that stimulate compassionate mental states and sense of self.

You will have direct experience of mindfulness and compassion practices drawn from a synthesis of Western therapeutic and Buddhist approaches. Integrating mindfulness into the practice of compassion, we will find a step-by-step approach to cultivating the inner compassionate self.

Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) brings an evolutionary framework to the conceptualisation of mental health and social problems and their alleviation. Human compassion is how we use our caring motivational systems to address emotional difficulties in ourselves and others using new brain intelligences.

You will cover/learn:

• the evolutionary basis of compassion and some of its physiological mediators
• the link between attachment and building the compassionate mind for clinical issues
• how to use the compassionate mind to address self-criticism and emotional regulation for clinical issues.

Practicing compassion is shown to have powerful effects on the mind, body, and social processes. Through conscious identification with qualities of strength, wisdom and commitment, we learn to embody the compassionate self. From this place, we are then in a position to relate compassionately to the parts of ourselves that struggle and to broaden our compassion to other people in our lives. In this way, we will experience the healing qualities that come from a stable and compassionate mind and develop new and transformative ways of being with our self and other people.
 

Questions are welcome during the day, and Paul will endeavour to get through as many as possible during the time available.

Presenter

Paul Gilbert, PhD, FBPsS, OBE is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and is a Visiting Professor at The University of Queensland, Australia.

He obtained his PhD in clinical training in 1980. He was an NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust until his retirement in (1989-2016). He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology for over 40 years with a special focus on shame and the treatment of shame-based difficulties - for which compassion focused therapy was developed. He was made a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1993 in recognition of his original research.

In 2003 Paul was president of the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. He was an invited expert member for the first British Governments’ NICE guidelines for depression. He has written/edited 23 books and over 300 publications.

In 2006 he established the Compassionate Mind Foundation, a charity with the mission statement “to promote wellbeing through the scientific understanding and application of compassion”. He was awarded an OBE in March 2011.