Paul Gilbert, FBPsS, PhD, OBE is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust. He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology 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 2003 Paul was president of the BABCP and a member of the first British Governments’ NICE guidelines for depression. He has written/edited 20 books and over 200 papers, and spoken on TV and radio In 2006 he established the Compassionate Mind Foundation as a charity with the mission statement To promote wellbeing through the scientific understanding and application of compassion (www.compassionatemind.co.uk). He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in March 2011.
PRE-CONGRESS WORKSHOP on 05.09.2018, 09:00-17:00:
An introduction to compassion focused therapy (CFT)
Part 1 of this workshop introduces participants to the origins and nature of the CFT model with a focus on:
- the serious problems for humanity due to the nature of our evolved minds
- The importance of recognising our multiple motivational and emotional systems that can be in conflict with each other and are context sensitive
- The three systems of affect regulation, with a specific focus on creating a sense of safeness and how that links to attachment theory, evolve nature and function of social relationships, and the relationship between sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous system.
Part 2 will introduce concepts of:
- What compassion actually is (and is not) from an evolutionary model
- how it relates to affiliative processing and can organise the mind in particular ways
- Some of the practices that are used to cultivate compassion. These will include attention training, soothing rhythm breathing, safe placed imagery, perspective taking, compassionate self-cultivation, compassionate-self focusing and compassion image focusing.
Introduction to how to use a compassionate-self focusing to address various emotional difficulties including self-criticism. Participants will be engaged in personal practice and trying out these practices and group reflections.
Learning objectives
Participants will
- Learn about the origins of CFT and how it was developed for people with high shame and self-criticism – and the different types of shame and self-criticism.
- understand the process of compassion as flow: the compassion we feel for others; the compassion we are open to from others; and self-compassion
- recognise how different practices focus on different elements of this “flow” and be able to recognise which practices go with which focus for compassion.
- Participants will learn how to use imagery for compassion practice
Training Modalities:
PowerPoint case discussions video clips and personal practices