Table Of ContentFirst published in Great Britain in 2017 by Robinson
Copyright © Chris Irons and Elaine Beaumont, 2017
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
p.167: From Rebuilding the Front Porch of America: Essays on the Art of
Community Making. Columbia College: 1997
p.353: From The Leaning Tree © Patrick Overton, 1976
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in
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including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-47213-591-9
Robinson
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
www.hachette.co.uk
www.littlebrown.co.uk
For Sue and Korina
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
SECTION I
WHY WE NEED COMPASSION
1. We have tricky brains
2. We are shaped by our experiences
3. Understanding our emotions
4. Understanding how and why our difficulties arise
SECTION II
UNDERSTANDING COMPASSION
5. What is compassion?
6. The three flows of compassion
7. Why compassion can be difficult
SECTION III
BUILDING CAPACITY: DEVELOPING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR
OUR COMPASSIONATE MIND
8. Attention and mindfulness
9. Cultivating the soothing system I – Body and breathing focus
10. Cultivating the soothing system II – Using imagery and memory
11. Building the drive system
SECTION IV
DEVELOPING OUR COMPASSIONATE MIND
12. Developing our compassionate self
13. Developing our compassionate other
14. Developing our compassionate team
SECTION V
DIRECTING OUR COMPASSIONATE MIND: COMPASSION AS
FLOW
15. Compassion for others
16. Experiencing compassion from others
17. Self-compassion
SECTION VI
DEVELOPING THE SKILLS OF OUR COMPASSIONATE MIND
18. Putting our compassionate mind to work – Compassionate attention
19. Putting our compassionate mind to work – Compassionate thinking
20. Putting our compassionate mind to work – Compassionate engagement of
emotion
21. Putting our compassionate mind to work – Compassionate behaviour
22. Compassionate mind – Bringing together the whole – Compassionate
letter writing
SECTION VII
PUTTING OUR COMPASSIONATE MIND TO WORK WITH
COMMON DIFFICULTIES
23. Working with common difficulties – Understanding and bringing
compassion to our multiple selves
24. Working with common difficulties – Bringing our compassionate mind to
shame and self-criticism
25. Working with common difficulties – How to manage fears, blocks or
resistances to compassion
SECTION VIII
LOOKING FORWARD: SUSTAINING OUR COMPASSIONATE
MIND
26. Looking forward – Sustaining our compassionate mind
Resource bank
Index
Acknowledgements
We would both like to thank our clients, past and present, who we have
worked with over the years. Working alongside you, witnessing your courage
and wisdom in the face of adversity, is a privilege and an honour.
We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Paul Gilbert, the team at
The Compassionate Mind Foundation and colleagues and friends from the
CFT community – Michelle Cree, Dennis Tirch, Mary Welford, Russell Kolts,
Tobyn Bell, Charlie Heriot-Maitland, Deborah Lee, Kate Lucre, Gill Rayner,
Jean Gilbert and many others. Your guidance while we wrote this book has
been invaluable and we are very grateful for the support you have given to us
throughout this process.
We would also like to acknowledge and thank Tobyn Bell, Charlie Heriot-
Maitland, Tim LeBon, Sue Massey and Dennis Tirch for looking through
drafts and for giving helpful direction and suggestions for this book. A special
thank you to Korina Ioannou for all your hard work, help and wisdom – this
book wouldn’t be what it is without your help.
Thank you also to Andrew McAleer, Jane Donovan and Rebecca Sheppard at
Little, Brown for all your help, support and patience!
Elaine:
Thank you to my friends and colleagues, past and present, at the University of
Salford – you continue to encourage, nurture, teach and inspire me. Thanks
also to the students at the University of Salford who enthusiastically
volunteered their time, giving feedback regarding many of the exercises in
this book; teaching you is a pleasure.
Thank you to family and friends who have encouraged and supported me
while writing this book, and to Sr Anne O’Shea, a remarkable woman who
inspired me to work in the helping profession. Sadly she is no longer with us,
but her light continues to shine.
Finally, thank you to Sue. Without your support, unfailing belief in me,
compassion and good humour, this would not have been possible.
Chris:
A big thank you to my current and past colleagues who have assisted and
supported me in my interest in Compassion Focused Therapy. Thank you to
my family and friends for all your love, care and backing – it’s a powerful
thing to know that you have people behind you in this way.
A special thank you to Paul Gilbert. I don’t get enough opportunities to say
how appreciative I am of you mentoring, support and friendship.
Finally, a massive thank you to my wife, Korina. Words can’t describe my
appreciation of your love and encouragement. Thank you for allowing me to
be this version of myself!
Introduction
Welcome to The Compassionate Mind Workbook. This book focuses on how
developing compassion for ourselves and others can help us to navigate the
ups, downs and struggles that are common in life. In the last twenty years
there has been an increasing amount of research showing how practising
compassion can change the way we think, feel and behave – and even how
our bodies and brains work. It is easy for people to misunderstand compassion
though – as something soft, fluffy, indulgent or even weak. In reality,
compassion is one of the wisest and most courageous motivations we have!
Think about it for a moment: it’s often a compassionate motivation that leads
to training to join the services of fire, sea and air; it’s a compassionate
motivation that leads us towards studying for many years to become part of a
helping profession, such as a teacher, doctor or nurse. Indeed, any time we
want to make a difference to somebody, to be helpful and supportive in times
they are struggling, we are engaging our compassion motivation. If you take a
moment to think about people who are known for being compassionate –
maybe people like Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela – these were
not weak people but rather, people determined to bring a compassionate
approach to the world. There is absolutely nothing weak, fluffy or soft about
compassion; it is the most important of all our motives. The problem is that
for many reasons we do not remember to work from this motivation, and
instead act out of anger, hatred, fear, shame or even self-criticism and self-
dislike.
Although we will return to this in more detail in Chapter 4, it may be helpful
early on to clarify what compassion is, and what it isn’t. As one of our clients
said to one of us: ‘The biggest problem with compassion is the word itself!’
This turned out to be an important insight and one shared by other clients,
therapists and people in general when it comes to thinking about developing
compassion.
What’s in a word?
Some of the difficulties with compassion relate to the word itself. When we
introduce the idea of compassion to people and ask them to name the words
they feel are associated with it, many describe a variety of positively directed
terms, including care, kindness, warmth, patience, empathy and
understanding. However, sometimes people name negatively associated
words such as pity, weakness, indulgence, ‘letting myself off the hook’ and
even ‘wishy-washy’.
Think about the word ‘compassion’ – does it have any negative associations
for you? What do you not like about it?
Of course, if you do have some negatively loaded terms that pop up in your
head, that’s not your fault. However, it might make it difficult for you to
practise becoming more compassionate with yourself or others if that’s the
case! So to start with we just want to let you know that for us, compassion is
none of those negative terms.
In the approach we will take in this book, compassion is a ‘sensitivity to
suffering in self and others, with a commitment to alleviate and prevent it’. So
based on this definition, compassion requires certain qualities of mind. First,
we need to develop a preparedness to pay attention to things that are difficult
without turning away, avoiding, switching off, or simply reaching for that
bottle of wine. This means we develop the courage to turn towards our own
and others’ difficulties, not away from them. This book will explore how we
develop the strength and courage that allows us to do this. Second, we need to
develop wisdom in our desire to be caring and helpful; so unfortunately, good
intention is not enough, we also need to develop a variety of skills that help us
to work with our own and others’ difficulties and distress. Here’s an example:
suppose you see somebody fall into a river. Because they look like they’re
drowning, Baywatch style, you run up to the edge of the water and dive in to
save them. Certainly a compassionate thing to do, right? Well yes, but only if
you can swim. If you can’t, then sadly both of you are likely to drown, and
this wouldn’t have been a compassionate behaviour. Here’s another example:
if you wanted to be a doctor and help people, it would be important for you to
pay attention to peoples’ distress, pain and suffering, but you would also need
to study for many years to acquire wisdom to know how best to do this. You
have intuitive wisdom about how many things in life involve the development
of skills and knowledge – if you want to be good at the guitar, or golf, or
teaching, what do you have to do? So we all know that practice, and the
acquisition of skills, are important in many areas of life.
It turns out that it’s the same for compassion, and our minds. The more we
understand our minds and in particular, the more we understand how to look
after them and cultivate them, the happier we’re likely to be. In our culture we
teach many important subjects at school – maths, languages, science and so
