Soothing the injured brain with a compassionate mind: Building the case for compassion focused therapy following acquired brain injury

This chapter provides an overview for the rationale of using compassion focused therapy (CFT) to ameliorate psychological distress following acquired brain injury (ABI). It focuses on shame and self-criticism in association with psychological distress and treatment. The chapter also provides an introduction to CFT including the key components of the approach and the evidence base. It describes special considerations for CFT following ABI. The chapter also describes a case example of applying CFT following ABI. The trend to do research in the area of self-criticism and shame in non-brain injured mental health populations is relatively, and unsurprisingly research of this type post-ABI is sparse. Self-criticism may be a process that narrows an individual's ability to be open and explore their own feelings as they lack social safeness and may feel ashamed. Shame plays a central role in CFT; it is linked to the fact that humans want to create positive feelings about the self in the mind of others.