Continuing & Professional Studies, Palo Alto University

This self-paced training program on the Compassion Focused Therapy for Distressing Experiences In Psychosis is presented by Charlie Heriot-Maitland, PhD.

This training program introduces the CFT model of compassion and describes how to apply this model in interventions for people with psychosis. Specifically, participants learn how to help their clients establish a bodily experience of safeness through the:

- practice of soothing rhythm breathing, which activates the parasympathetic system;

- learning to recognize what postures and activities ground and centre the person;

- and using mindfulness and imagery exercises.

In this program, participants learn how to create the external contexts (e.g. interpersonal and environmental) in which safeness experience can flourish. Dr. Heriot-Maitland also discusses how to develop a ‘compassionate self,’ which is a part of them with the qualities required to explore and engage with their fears, voices, and dissociated parts; essentially, a self-identity that organizes the mind and provides a secure base (or grounding) from which to do the therapeutic work. He demonstrates how to use these compassionate qualities and skills to manage internal conflicts and to initiate supportive dialogue between voices and different emotional parts. This is achieved through techniques such as voice dialoguing / talking with voices, imagery, chair work, and letter writing.