Compassionate Imagery: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Compassionate Imagery, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Practices that may help
- Compassionate Imagery: The Compassionate Image and Safe Place
Develop a vivid compassionate figure in imagination whose care you can access during distress.
Compassion-Focused Therapy: Calming the Inner Critic - Direct tonglen toward a specific suffering person
Bring a person who is suffering to mind and breathe in their pain; breathe out whatever would give them relief.
Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending - Shared condition meditation
Sit briefly with the awareness that right now, thousands of people are feeling exactly what you feel.
Common Humanity, Made Practical - Call on your inner fierce ally
Develop an internalized image of a powerful, compassionate protector you can invoke in moments of threat.
Fierce Self-Compassion, Made Practical - Soothing Rhythm Breathing
Use slow, rhythmic breathing to deliberately activate the physiological soothing system before other compassion practices.
Compassion-Focused Therapy: Calming the Inner Critic - N — Nurture with self-compassion
Offer the part that is suffering what it most needs — care, acknowledgment, reassurance — as you would a dear friend.
RAIN Meditation: Tara Brach’s Four-Step Practice - Acknowledge: name what is hard
Place a hand on your heart and say, "This is a moment of suffering."
The Self-Compassion Break - Use imagery to re-engage with avoided experiences
Revisit a distressing memory in concrete imagery rather than abstract analysis.
Rumination-Focused CBT, Made Practical - Imagery rescripting for schema memories
Revisit a difficult childhood memory in imagination and rewrite it so the child’s needs are met.
Schema Therapy: Healing Early Maladaptive Beliefs - Compassion-Focused Therapy: Calming the Inner Critic
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), developed by Paul Gilbert, targets shame and self-criticism by training a compassionate inner voice to replace the punitive self-critic. It draws on evolutionary psychology and affective neuroscience — specifically, the finding that different emotional systems (threat, drive, soothing) have distinct neurobiological profiles. A growing body of RCT evidence supports CFT for shame-based difficulties, self-criticism, and depression, though the evidence base is smaller than for CBT.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- When everything’s falling apart I have nobody in my head to turn to
- Someone I love is suffering and there is nothing I can actually do to fix it, and that helplessness is unbearable
- Right now, in this exact ache, I feel cut off from everyone
- When someone’s steamrolling me or my inner critic is screaming, I freeze and fold because it feels like I’m facing it completely alone
- Every time I try to be gentle with myself my body’s still wound tight and braced, and the calming part just won’t take
Related concerns
- Compassion Focused Therapy Imagery
Develop a vivid compassionate figure in imagination whose care you can access during distress.
Compassionate Imagery: The Compassionate Image and Safe Place
- Compassion Focused Therapy Role Play
Develop a vivid compassionate figure in imagination whose care you can access during distress.
- Compassion Imagery Cft
Develop a vivid compassionate figure in imagination whose care you can access during distress.
- Cft Compassionate Mind
Develop a vivid compassionate figure in imagination whose care you can access during distress.
- Compassion Focused Therapy
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), developed by Paul Gilbert, targets shame and self-criticism by training a compassionate inner voice to replace the punitive self-critic. It draws on evolutionary psychology and affective neuroscience — specifically, the finding that different emotional systems (threat, drive, soothing) have distinct neurobiological profiles. A growing body of RCT evidence supports CFT for shame-based difficulties, self-criticism, and depression, though the evidence base is smaller than for CBT.
- Compassion Focused Therapy Activity
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), developed by Paul Gilbert, targets shame and self-criticism by training a compassionate inner voice to replace the punitive self-critic. It draws on evolutionary psychology and affective neuroscience — specifically, the finding that different emotional systems (threat, drive, soothing) have distinct neurobiological profiles. A growing body of RCT evidence supports CFT for shame-based difficulties, self-criticism, and depression, though the evidence base is smaller than for CBT.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.