Introducing our new CFTp training pathway!

Stage 1: Foundations of CFTp

The Foundations of CFTp workshop provides a basic overview of the application of CFT to individuals experiencing distressing voices and extreme beliefs. This workshop is open to all individuals interested in learning more about this approach. 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 from that of threat states. This training is open to all individuals regardless of experience or role.

Stage 2: Clinical Skills in CFTp

Ready to further your skills in CFTp and apply this approach clinically?

We are offering a 16-hour online live CFTp training that focuses on applying CFT skills and concepts in a clinical setting. 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. This training provides an orientation to the model as applied to working with individuals with early psychosis and longer-standing presentations of psychosis.

Participants should have previously attended the Foundations of CFTp workshop or other similar CFT training. However, all registrants will receive access to an Orientation to CFT recording, which should be reviewed before the commencement of the Stage 2 clinical skills training. Participants who attended the Foundations of CFTp training on 3/25/25 or who have participated in previous CFTp training may opt not to review this recording. Participants who have no prior CFTp training should plan to review this recording prior to the commencement of stage 2.

Stage 3: Experiential practices in CFTp

Want to go even further?

INSPIRE training is offering an exciting opportunity to participate in a two-day in-person experiential CFTp training. This intensive workshop will help CFT therapists share and connect with some of the deeper challenges of working with people with trauma and psychosis and how we resource ourselves with self-compassion and peer/personal relationships that can help us with this important work. Examples of experiential exercises covered in this training include chair work, voice dialogue and letter writing to fully support consolidation of CFT skills. 

This training will be held in person at Stanford. 

General objectives:

1. Build a strong basis for therapy with psycho-education and formulation about threat-protective processes and functions

2. Build confidence in applying experiential and creative CFT techniques in therapy for people with trauma and psychosis

Tricky brains:

3. Self - Understand how our own brains create self-inflicted harms and problems for us (e.g., self-sabotage, self-criticism)

4. Clients with psychosis - Develop formulations with clients about how their brains have patterns that are protective but also harmful

The ‘big 3’ (angry, anxious, sad):

5. Self - Understand their own relationships to the 'big 3’ multiple selves

6. Clients with psychosis - Working with their clients’ relationships to their multiple selves, especially those ‘behind the curtain’ of their psychosis

Fears, blocks, and resistances:

7. Self - Understand their own fears, blocks, and resistances in the context of psychosis

8. Clients with psychosis - Use interventions such as role play to work with (the wisdom of) fears, blocks, and resistances

CMT and compassionate kitbag:

9. Self - Develop practices and resources to support their own compassionate mind training

10. Clients with psychosis - Help clients to develop their own kitbag of support for compassionate mind training