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S5E1: What if compassion makes a client feel worse? | Professor Paul Gilbert
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S5E1: What if compassion makes a client feel worse? | Professor Paul Gilbert
What do you do when a client understands compassion perfectly well, but rejects it, distrusts it or feels worse when you introduce it?
Professor Paul Gilbert developed Compassion Focused Therapy for precisely the clients who cannot simply “be kinder” to themselves. In this episode, he explains the three clinical shocks that helped shape CFT. This is for those moments when clients can produce more balanced thoughts but deliver them in a cold or hostile tone. Many people experience kindness as weak, undeserved or almost toxic. For others, receiving care might activate painful memories held within the attachment system.
Dr Natalie Stott, Host and clinical psychologist discuss empathic bridging, the importance of social trust and why receiving compassion from others can be particularly difficult. Paul also revisits the familiar three circles model. He explains threat, drive and the system often called “soothing” through their evolutionary functions, including the role of connection in helping us return to a regulated state.
The conversation finishes with practical ways to bring compassion into everyday behaviour. These include changing the emotional tone of self-talk, practising one compassionate skill at a time and validating the emotion underneath an immediate reaction.
Guest Information:
Professor Paul Gilbert is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby. He is the founder of Compassion Focused Therapy and the Compassionate Mind Foundation. His work has shaped clinical understandings of compassion, shame, self-criticism and threat.
Website: https://www.compassionatemind.co.uk/
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