The Compassionate Mind (Compassion Focused Therapy)

by Paul A. Gilbert

In my 1989 book Human Nature and Suffering,4 I had explored research that suggested that we have special brain systems to enable us to feel a sense of safeness, reassurance and pleasurable, calming relief, and that this is linked to being cared for and receiving affection. Slowly the penny dropped: if the emotion system that enables us to feel reassurance, relief and safeness isn’t working or accessible, people may indeed understand something but not feel any reassurance or relief from that knowledge.

However, in a fascinating twist, research was starting to show clearly that there are different types of positive emotion. One is linked to drive and excitement and another is connected to feelings of reassurance, security, safeness and calm peacefulness

Researchers have also found that, from the day we are born to the day we die, the kindness, support, encouragement and compassion of others has a huge impact on how our brains, bodies and general sense of well-being develop. Love and kindness, especially in early life, even affect how some of our genes are expressed!1 So it turns out that kindness and compassion are indeed paths to happiness and well-being.

Despite our wealth and comforts, half of us will have some kind of mental health problem at some point, with depression, anxiety, alcoholism and eating disorders topping the list. The World Health Organization has worked out that depression will be the second-most burdensome disorder on Earth by 2020 and other mental health problems will be in the top ten.

These social ecologies also impact on child-rearing practices, which can be harsh and punitive.19 So the way you come to think of yourself as a person, the values that you believe are important to you are actually created for you in your social contexts. If you grow up in a safe, loving environment, your values will be different than if you grow up in the back streets, where violence and the threat of violence are never far away. If you grow up in a Buddhist monastery, your values regarding a whole range of things will be different than if you grow up in a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim family. We like to focus on individuals and target them if they do right or wrong, but the challenge is to recognize that we are far more created than we are the creators of our own identities and senses of self.

A well-known finding suggests that ‘neurons that fire together wire together’. So you can imagine how extensively the brain of an infant receiving soothing and affection will be getting wired up compared to one of an infant receiving little soothing, who is also neglected or often being stressed.

By the time of humans, our brains have evolved to be caring and to need caring to such an extent that the way they shape and wire themselves throughout life, the pattern of their interconnections, is significantly influenced by the affection, love and caring they receive.13 Parental caring not only soothes children when they’re distressed, but it helps them to understand and come to terms with how their minds work; they can talk about their feelings and things that have happened to them. Knowing that they exist in the mind of another as a loved person stimulates their soothing/contentment system and makes their world feel secure. This is the way our brains are built. We depend on care and love.

We do not live in a world of equality; our genes and our life experiences will treat us unequally.

In fact, it is now fairly well accepted that the kind of person we are emerges from the interaction of two major controlling processes that we as individuals have absolutely no control over: our genes and our early environment. It is the interaction of these that brings us into existence and gives us our experience of ‘being oneself’. Understanding this fact about our own personhood and life has huge implications for how we come to see ourselves, our journey into compassion, our path to well-being and fulfilment and, for those interested, our spiritual journey. When