Coaching practices for Compassionate Mind Training
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Compassionate Mind Training, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
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
- There’s one particular person I can’t even think about without my whole body tightening with resentment
- I’d never talk to a friend the way I talk to myself, but kindness toward me just isn’t a voice I have
- 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
- A hard moment just hit and I can feel the spiral starting
Practices that may help
- 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. - 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 - Compassion meditation for widening the circle
Extend deliberate well-wishing to people you find difficult, building non-aversion before you encounter them.
Ahimsa: Non-Violence as a Daily Practice - Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
Lojong is a Tibetan Buddhist mind-training system, codified by Atisha and later Chekawa, built around 59 slogans that train the mind to transform adversity into awakening and to cultivate compassion for all beings including oneself. Evidence is primarily contemplative-clinical; some practices (loving-kindness, tonglen-adjacent exercises) have been studied, but the full system is practitioner tradition rather than a clinical protocol. - Developing the Compassionate Self Voice
Build an inner voice that responds to your suffering with wisdom, warmth, and commitment to wellbeing.
Compassion-Focused Therapy: Calming the Inner Critic - 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 - The self-compassion break
A three-step phrase you say in a hard moment: this is suffering, suffering is human, may I be kind to myself.
Self-Compassion, Made Practical - The self-compassion break (Neff’s three-step pause)
In a hard moment: acknowledge, connect, and offer kindness — three breaths, three phrases.
Working With Your 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 - The Self-Compassion Break
The self-compassion break is a three-step micro-practice from Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) that interrupts self-critical spirals by deliberately invoking mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness in sequence. Clinical and observational research supports MSC as a whole; this specific exercise is the distilled delivery of its core mechanism.
Related concerns
- Compassion Focused Therapy Calming The Inner Critic After A Setback
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 Calming The Inner Critic During A Big Change
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 Calming The Inner Critic When Burned Out
Develop a vivid compassionate figure in imagination whose care you can access during distress.
- Chair Work 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 Fatigue Antidote
When self-compassion initially hurts more, that is backdraft — a sign it is working, not failing.
Recognize backdraft — the pain that arises when kindness first lands
- 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.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.