April is National Counseling Awareness Month, which offers the opportunity to reflect on the impact of therapy and the healing power of human connection. Whether you’re starting therapy or continuing your growth, this month invites reflection on the benefits of counseling—especially when grounded in theories like compassion-focused therapy. Rooted in neuroscience and emotional safety, this approach helps clients move from self-criticism to self-kindness. In this blog, we’ll explore the role of compassion-focused therapy, define protective factors, and introduce tools like the ProQOL for providers in helping professions.
What Is Compassion-Focused Therapy and Why Does It Matter?
I have often heard clients walk in my therapy door using language that they need to be “fixed,” “better,” or “less emotional”. What if healing didn’t come from changing who we are—but from learning how to accept and care for ourselves exactly where we are in life? Nonjudgment is the foundation of Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), a powerful approach to emotional healing rooted in neuroscience, attachment, and the universal need for safety.
Developed by psychologist Dr. Paul Gilbert, Compassion-Focused Therapy helps people shift from self-criticism toward self-kindness. At its core, CFT acknowledges how many of us have learned to survive by activating our threat system—the animalistic part of our brain designed to detect danger and keep us on guard. While necessary for survival, living in constant “threat mode” often leads to anxiety, perfectionism, and emotional shutdown. As a relational therapist, I have also lead the threat system lead couples and families toward disconnection.
CFT teaches us that we all have three key emotional systems:
- The threat system, which scans for danger and activates fight/flight/freeze;
- The drive system, which pushes us toward goals, achievement, or productivity;
- And the soothing system, which helps us feel safe, connected, and grounded.
Some people grow up in traumatic environments where they were forced to validate their own existence. Other people may have had parents or caregivers who were unable to provide good emotional skillsets and soothing wasn’t consistently modeled—especially if love and safety felt conditional. As a result, they may come to a place where overreliance on drive or threat is the norm. These people often grow up to struggle to access a felt sense of safety or self-acceptance. That’s where CFT becomes so transformative.
Through practices like compassionate imagery, soothing breathwork, and gentle self-talk, clients learn to cultivate emotional safety from within. Over time, this strengthens their ability to respond to life’s challenges with flexibility and care, rather than self-blame or overwhelm. They become confident in making decisions, knowing mistakes and feeling “stuck” are all a part of our common humanity.
As a therapist, I’ve seen firsthand how compassion opens the door for clients to relate to themselves not as problems to be solved—but as humans deserving of kindness and understanding. Through this transformation, they cultivate the flexibility necessary to strengthen their own relationships from a place of empathy and connection. CFT doesn’t ask you to deny your pain; it helps you soften toward it.
Protective Factors: How Compassion Builds Resilience
CFT helps us recognize our supports when life becomes overwhelming. In the world of mental health, we call these supports protective factors: the resources and relationships which give us buffers from stress, trauma, or burnout. Think of them as the roots that keep us grounded when the wind picks up.
Protective factors can be both internal (like reframing negative thought patterns) and external (like asking a partner or trusted friend for a hug). In compassion-focused therapy, we conceptualize compassion itself as a protective factor—especially for those navigating shame, trauma, anxiety, or high self-criticism. Think of compassion as a learned coping skill, rather than something we are intuitively born with. We can actually learn foster, cultivate, and strengthen compassion over time.
Examples of internal protective factors:
- Emotional regulation skills (like grounding or breathwork)
- Self-compassion in moments of failure or distress (like re-framing self-critical thoughts)
- Common humanity (the ability to remember we are not alone in our struggles)
- Mindful awareness, which helps us choose to respond rather than react to triggers
Examples of external protective factors:
- Safe relationships
- Connection to community or support groups
- Access to trauma-informed therapy
- Stable housing, financial security, or reliable and healthy food
- Nature, creativity, or spiritual practices which offer peace
Through using these protective factors, we grow our capacity to gently hold our pain through tough moments. Compassion doesn’t make life’s hardships disappear, but it does shift how we relate to them. What small moment of self-kindness could you practice in this moment?
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