This booklet has been written for those who may be working individually with a compassion focused
therapist or in a group. It can also be used by people who want to know more about the compassion
focused approach for helping with difficult emotions and tendencies to be self-critical. More detailed
writing on the compassion focused approach can be found in Paul Gilbert’s book ‘The Compassionate
Mind’. This booklet is split into two sections. The first section offers an outline of a basic approach to
thinking about the nature of, and value of, developing compassion in our lives. The second section
explores some exercises that you can practise to try to stimulate your own compassionate mind.
First we will outline the basic model and approach to compassion that we will be following. This will
explore how our brains work and what we mean by compassion. Now, of course, compassion training
has been around for a long time, especially in Buddhist traditions, but here it is linked to some new ideas
about how our brains work. We are going to start by looking at a couple of challenges that life presents
us with and that we all experience
