Mary Welford - Compassion Focused Therapy For Dummies

Compassion Focused Therapy For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2016

2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940425

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978-1-119-07862-3 (pbk); 978-1-119-07863-0 (ebk); 978-1-119-07869-2 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

You can work through a never-ending list of things you could do to improve your wellbeing. Getting more sleep, taking regular exercise, eating a healthier diet, developing a positive mental attitude and drinking less alcohol are just some of the things you may benefit from. Advice comes from the TV, newspapers, self-help books, friends, relatives, colleagues, healthcare professionals and even the chats we have with ourselves!

But its hard to motivate ourselves to make helpful changes. Its even harder to maintain them. Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) is here to help. This approach offers life-changing insights into our amazing capacities and also the challenges we face in our everyday lives. By understanding ourselves, we become motivated to act out of true care for our wellbeing. This changes the relationship we have with ourselves and others.

Practicing CFT wont mean you suddenly turn into a perfect version of yourself. It does however mean that you become more aware of the choices you have and youre motivated to make ones that are more helpful to you. And yes, you find plenty of advice in here to guide you on your way too!

Compassion Focused Therapy For Dummies contains a wealth of important information that can help you to understand yourself, and others, better. It also introduces you to practices that you can integrate into your everyday life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day .

Ive used as little jargon and off-putting technical terms as possible, and so you dont need to approach this book with a background knowledge of psychology. Simply put, if youre in possession of a human brain and youd like to discover more about CFT, this book is written for you.

That said, two factors may motivate you to continue developing your understanding of CFT once you finish this book:

• CFT is rooted in a scientific understanding of what it is to be human. As such, the approach constantly evolves to reflect the science. In the same way as its helpful to keep up with advancing technology, its also good to keep up with advancing our understanding of ourselves.
• We humans are highly complex. This book simply doesnt have the room to do CFT complete justice not if you want to be able to lift it up! When you finish reading, you may want to move on to explore the comprehensive work of Paul Gilbert (the originator of the CFT approach), his colleagues and collaborators.

In writing this book, Ive had to make a few assumptions about you. Ive assumed that:

• Youre interested in improving your wellbeing.
• You appreciate that CFT is based on an incredible amount of research but you dont necessarily want to plough through it all!
• You realise that Ive had to make some tough decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Hopefully most of the choices Ive made are right (but thankfully I wont criticise myself if Ive made a mistake; I hope you dont either!).
• You recognise that Im not trying to pass CFT off as my own creation. Instead, I set out to describe the work of Paul Gilbert and colleagues (of whom I am privileged to be one).
• You may be selective about which parts of the book you read. As such, Ive written this book in a way that allows each chapter to stand alone so that you can pick and choose the content you want to read, and when you want to read it.
• Youre prepared to give new things a go!

If youre a therapist or studying CFT, I also assume that you recognise the importance of learning the approach from the inside out, and as such that youll work through the book with this in mind.

Icons are handy little graphic images that point out particularly important information about CFT. Throughout this book, you find the following icons, conveniently located along the left margins:

Remember what follows this icon, as its important. It helps to return to these points from time to time to help you understand and connect with the approach further.