Dennis Tirch, Ph.D.
The Center for Mindfulness and Compassion-Focused Therapy
Russell L. Kolts, Ph.D.
Eastern Washington University
*Kind of soft, fluffy, and pink
*“airy-fairy”
*Being nice all of the time
*Always giving people exactly
what they want.
*Two psychologies at work: sensitivity
to suffering, and motivation to help.
*Compassion begins by approaching
suffering…which is why the CFT-anger
group is called True Strength.
*Emphasis on mindful
awareness (awareness and
sensitivity to suffering)
combined with workable action
(helping and motivation to
help).
“Hope Comforting Love in
Bondage” courtesy of the
Birmingham Museums and
Art Gallery Collections,
Birmingham, UK
Artist: Sidney Harold
Meteyard, 1901
*Our brains are brilliant but
problematic ‘patchwork quilts’ of
evolved structures and functions.
*Tricky dynamics between “old”
emotional brains and “new” brains
*
*
“We all just find ourselves here…”
*
Emotions not as isolating, but as
common elements that unite us.
*
Mindful observations of threat
emotions as prompts for compassion.
Emotions as evolved capacities with
specific purposes (3 Circles)
*Old, emotional brain is very powerful,
not very clever.
*Threat emotions narrow our attention,
lower our cognitive flexibility, and
strongly influence the contents and
process of our reasoning.
*Emotional inertia via the interplay of
emotional “old-brain”,“new brain”, and
body
Understanding our Motives and
Emotions
Motives evolved because they help animals to
survive and leave genes behind.
Emotions guide us to our goals and respond if we
are succeeding or threatened.
CFT focuses on three types of emotion regulation
system:
1.Those that focus on threat and self-protection
2.Those that focus on doing and achieving
3.Those that focus on contentment and feeling
safe
Types of Affect Regulator Systems
Drive, Excitement, Vitality
Content, Safe, Connected
Non-wanting/
Affiliative focused
Incentive/resourcefocused
Safeness-kindness
Wanting, pursuing,
achieving, consuming
Soothing
Activating
Threat-focused
Protection and
Safety-seeking
Activating/inhibiting
Anger, Anxiety, Fear, Disgust
The Threat System
Threat-focused
Protection and
Safety-seeking
Activating/inhibiting
Anger, Anxiety, Disgust
Our Old/Emotional Brains are
Biased toward Processing Threat
In species without attachment,
typically only 1-2% make it to
adulthood to reproduce. Threats
come from ecologies, food
shortage,
predation,
injury,
disease. At birth individuals must
be able to ‘go it alone’, be
mobile and disperse. Survival
depends on efficiently detecting
and responding to threat.
Thinking
Reasoning
Attention
Imagery
Fantasy
Motivation
Anger
Behaviour
Emotions
Threat-focused
Protection and
Safety-seeking
Activating/inhibiting
Anger
Body/feelings
Tense
Heart increase
Pressure to act
Anger
Attention/Thinkin
g
Narrow-focused
Transgression/blo
ck
Scan – search
Behaviour
Increase outputs
Aggressive displays
Approach
Dissociate
Threat-focused
Protection and
Safety-seeking
Activating/inhibiting
Anxiety
Body/feelings
Tense
Attention/Thinkin
g
Passive avoidance
Heart increase
Narrow-focused
Active avoidance
Dry mouth
Danger threat
Submissive display
Scan – search
Dissociate
“Butterflies”
Afraid
Behavior
The Drive and Resource Acquisition System
Drive, Excitement, Vitality
Incentive/resourcefocused
Wanting, pursuing,
achieving, consuming
Activating
Threat-focused
Protection and
Safety-seeking
Activating/inhibiting
Anger, Anxiety, Fear, Disgust
Incentive/
resource-focused
Wanting, pursuing, achieving,
consuming
Activating
Excited
Body/feelings
Activation
Heart increase
Pressure to act
Disrupt sleep
Attention/Thinkin
g
Behaviour
Narrow-focused
Engage
Acquiring
Socialise
Explorative
Restless
Approach
Celebrating
The Safeness System
Drive, Excitement, Vitality
Content, Safe, Connected
Non-wanting/
Affiliative focused
Incentive/resourcefocused
Safeness-kindness
Wanting, pursuing,
achieving, consuming
Soothing
Activating
Threat-focused
Protection and
Safety-seeking
Activating/inhibiting
Anger, Anxiety, Fear, Disgust
Non-wanting/
Affiliative-focused
Safeness-kindness
Soothing
Well-being
Body/feelings
Calm
Attention/Thinking
Slow
Open-focused
Well-being
Reflective
Content
Prosocial
Behaviour
Peaceful
Gentle
Prosocial
Attention
Imagery
Fantasy
Motivation
Thinking
Reasoning
Compassion
Emotions
Behaviour
work
with
Why a Compassion Focus?
People with chronic problems often come from neglectful
or abusive backgrounds, have high levels of shame, and
are often self-critical, self-disliking, or self-hating.
Live in a world of constant internal and external threat.
Have few experiences of feeling safe or soothed and are
not able to do this for themselves. Often do poorly in
trials.
Soothing system poorly developed and will often say, “I
understand the theory but do not feel relieved or safe.”
This makes sense if that system is not working or
developed.
*Blaming and shaming ourselves and others
keeps us locked in threat-based emotions,
fueling our problems.
*Shame-based pain/distress fosters avoidance.
*Warming things up can help us feel safe,
balance emotions, and skillfully approach
difficulties rather than avoid them.
“There’s something wrong with me.”
*We have unlimited access to our own
internal experiences, and very limited
access to those of others. (“I feel like a
wreck, but they seem to be doing
alright!”)
*Evolution shaped us to be very
concerned about how we exist in the
minds of others, and how we compare to
them.
keeps us stuck in the threat
circle
*Compassion - “Being moved by
suffering and motivated to
alleviate it”
*Compassion involves
approaching and working with
suffering.
Introducing Compassion-Work via
Perspective Taking
*The two-teachers metaphor:
*Critical teacher vs Compassionate teacher
*Which teacher would you want your child to
have?
*Which would help your child learn & progress?
*When you observe yourself struggling or
feeling threat emotions, which teacher does
the voice in your head sound like?
Compassionate Self Work
*The goal is to help our clients cultivate
qualities that will help them to
effectively work with difficult emotions
and situations:
*Compassion
*Mindful awareness
*Courage and Confidence
*Kindness
*Wisdom
Method Acting + Imagery
*Imagining how we would think, feel,
behave, appear, experience, and
understand if we had these
compassionate qualities.
*Imagining the compassionate self in
action:
*From this perspective, how would you
understand this situation? Feel? Think? Work
with it?
Halfway between Self-as-context
and Self-as-content
*Emphasis on awareness, mindfulness –
cultivating qualities that facilitate open
awareness and reflectiveness.
*However, knowing that we often will relate
to ourselves in terms of a narrative,
compassionate self work enables clients to
cultivate an adaptive, value-driven version
of the self.
*“Awareness not as content-free, but as
not content-bound”
*Steve Hayes, 6/19/14
*We can “harness what language can
offer us”
*Jennifer Plumb, 6/19/14
Exploring Emotions: The 4
Square/Multiple Selves Exercise
Bring up a challenging situation.
Focus on bodily feelings, thoughts, motivations, and
fantasized behaviors.
What does this self feel like, think, say, want to do?
- Angry Self
- Anxious Self
- Sad Self
- Compassionate Self – the “Captain of the Ship”
Thinking
Reasoning
Attention
Imagery
Fantasy
Motivation
Anger
Behaviour
Emotions
The Four-Square Exercise
*A lot going on here:
*Increasing awareness of various threat emotions
that may be avoided.
*Gives a window into the dynamics of self-criticism.
*Exploring different emotional perspectives and how
they organize the mind.
*Learning to shift in and out of different emotions –
and building confidence that they can do this
without getting stuck.
*The Compassionate-self in action – ability to have
compassion for these emotional selves.
Significant Group X Time Interaction: STAXI Anger
Expression Index – F (1,10) = 7.06, p = .024 (Blue
line = CFT group).
Significant Group X Time Interaction: MAI AngerOut scale – F (1,14) = 5.85, p = .03.
Significant Group X Time Interaction: MAI Anger-In
scale – F (1,14) = 7.08, p = .019.
Except for decreases in fears of expressing
compassion to others, the Group X Time interactions
for changes in measures of compassion were
generally not significant.
*Fear of Compassion Scale
*Expressing to Others
*Receiving from Others
*Compassion to Self
F (1,12) = 8.43, p = .013*
F (1,13) = 4.30, p = .058
F (1,11) = .858, p = .374
*IRI Empathic Distress F (1,13) = .311, p = .59
*Self-Compassion Scale Total – F (1,13) = 1.83, p =.20
(the CFT-group within-group changes and main effects of time were quite significant)
Example non-significant finding for Group X Time
Interaction: IRI Perspective Taking – F (1,13) =
3.80, p = .073.
FOC Scale – Fear of Expressing Compassion to Others
FOC Scale – Fear of Receiving Compassion from
Others
FOC Scale – Fear of Self-Compassion
Self Compassion Scale Total Score
Correlations between change scores for anger and
compassion measures within CFT Group
Anger
Measure
FOC –
Compassion
from Others
FOC –
SelfCompassion to Compassion
Self
Scale total
score
MAI – Anger .63
In
n=9
.73*
.72*
.87**
n=9
n=8
n=9
MAI – Anger .64
Out
n=9
.69
n=9
.62
n=8
.37
n=9
STAXI –
.77
Anger
Expression n = 7
Index
.72
.49
.24
n=7
n=6
n=7
*p < .05
FOC–
Compassion
for Others
**p<.01
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