Dr. Paul Gilbert: Love Makes the World Go 'Round
Dr. Paul Gilbert is the creator of Compassion-Focused Therapy or CFT. CFT is a form of therapy that focuses on changing on not only on what a person thinks, but how they think. The problem that Paul noticed with other therapies was that when highly self-critical people tried to change how they think, they had an underlying self-critical tone to their thoughts. So that’s where Paul realized one of the problems with Cognitive Therapy: their thoughts are still cold and self-critical. What they need is warmth and love.
So he used compassion exercises that Buddhists used for thousands of years.
Dr. Gilbert is professor at the University of Derby, and he is the author of The Compassionate Mind, Mindful Compassion and many others.
More information on Compassion-Focused Therapy can be found here.
In this interview we talk about what compassion and Compassion-Focused Therapy are, how do you develop compassion, and how do we make our society and institutions more compassionate.