COMPASSION-FOCUSED GROUP

SUMMARY

 

Thank you for coming along to session 1 and beginning your journey with compassion focused therapy. It is taken courage just to get here and so you have already started that journey. If at any time you have concerns about continuing please talk to us as your facilitators as it is our intention to support you in the best way we can through what can understandably be difficult and hard times.

 

Your courage in sharing and caring for, and with, each other is also important. As we learn about how our brain actually works we can also learn how to ‘drive and steer it’ more in the way that we want to rather than it ‘doing its own thing.’ So the practices over the next  10 weeks will help you develop ways of doing this.

 

Once again thank you so much for coming along and giving us the opportunity of working with you.

 

Just a few notes for this week:

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Personal Practice

• In Module 1 we looked at what compassion is, our tricky brain and mind, and how we can get caught up so easily in difficult painful and upsetting thoughts. This is partly because the brain creates loops in the mind through no fault of our own. You can look at your Participant handout to see how we covered this.

• Also please find under the pictures on this page, a recording of the meditation we did. We will continue to provide recordings so that you can choose to try the activities between sessions. This will help you to consolidate the learning and also to begin to embed the practice in your every day life. 

• One of the things that will be helpful to you is to begin to notice how these loops can pop into the mind and get stuck. This is called becoming mindful which means that we are noticing.

• For example, imagine having a thought and maybe a body experience that is associated with some difficult experiences. Then say to yourself “I am having a thought and body experience about…X or Y.” And then say to yourself “I’m noticing that I’m having thought and body experience about X or Y.” This is the first principle to beginning to notice the loops in the mind and once we notice them then we have an opportunity to deal with them.

 

Reflections

Every journey begins with the first steps, as they say, so the idea is that slowly over time you will be able to develop your insight and understanding of how our minds work and how to work with them. As with developing any skill, be it playing a piano or a sport, it can take time to develop that skill. Sometimes it goes well but sometimes we can get a bit frustrated or disappointed because we are not developing as fast as we would like. That’s all in the way things are and although frustrating is not in any way your fault or your lack of effort. It just takes time and along the way you will be learning with others and helping them in their frustrating times too.

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Thank you again for all your efforts, we look forward to seeing you soon for session 2.

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Wishing you well

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