CFT for distressing voice-hearing and beliefs in psychosis (Stanford University)

July 10, 11, 17, and 18, 2023

9:30am-1:30pm(PST) Each Day

The workshop will outline Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) psychoeducation and how evolution has set humans up with a tricky brain that has a natural threat bias that can incline towards dissociating, problematic attention, and over-estimating threat, using ‘better safe than sorry’ algorithms. It will guide participants through the CFT formulation of voice-hearing and delusions, which focuses on their (protective) function for people, particularly in the context of interpersonal threat and trauma.

Building on these de-shaming foundations in psychoeducation and formulation, workshop participants will learn how to support their clients in developing a ‘compassionate self’ identity and how to switch into compassionate mind states that organize multiple physiological processes differently to that of threat states.

Participants will learn techniques that support their clients in applying compassionate competencies to achieve therapeutic change, with illustrative examples of interventions such as parts work, voice-dialoguing, imagery, letter-writing, and interventions that use role play, chair work embodiment and acting techniques.

Registered participants will be sent a link to a pre-workshop primer video two weeks prior to the first workshop date.