Compassion-focused therapy (CFT)

Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) aims to help promote mental and emotional healing by encouraging people in treatment to be compassionate toward themselves and other people. Compassion towards the self and others is an emotional response believed by many to be an essential aspect of well-being. Its development may often have the benefit of improved mental and emotional health.

The primary therapeutic technique of CFT is compassionate mind training (CMT). CMT refers to the strategies typically used to help individuals experience compassion and foster different aspects of compassion for the self and others. CMT aims to develop compassionate motivation, sympathy, sensitivity, and distress tolerance through the use of guided exercises (appreciation exercises, mindfulness practices, imagery exercises) designed to help individuals further develop non-judging and non-condemning attributes.