Psychedelics-assisted psychotherapy has gained attention as a new paradigm and has shown to be a promising treatment. However, still a lot of those treatments are offered as non-directive guidance and lack a theoretical model. Offering a psychotherapeutic model can actually enhance personal and meaningful experiences of psychedelic sessions.
Compassion Focused Therapy provides a rationale and practices that might enhance the effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy by increasing connectedness, compassion for self, and compassion for others. CFT is based on evolutionary psychology and attachment theory and stimulates the affiliative or ‘rest and digest’ system (Gilbert, 2014). It enables insight into the interplay of the lack of care and compassion, especially early in life, and underlying mental health problems, and shows how developing compassion can act as a psychotherapeutic process and promote social connection and social safeness.
Three types of CFT emotion regulation systems
Previous studies suggest that certain substances like psilocybin and mdma can produce similar increases in self-compassion and reductions in self-criticism, decrease negative affect, and increase connection and acceptance, similar to the proposed working of the affiliative system within CFT.
We believe that CFT may be a relevant psychotherapeutic model to help to improve the understanding of the experiences during administration or navigation and integration sessions, while at the same time providing meaningful practices that help the integrative process.
The theoretical model and treatment protocol proposed here is based on Compassion Focused Therapy and describes a psychotherapeutic framework that helps people understand and respond to their distress from the perspective of a compassionate mind.
Offering a psychotherapeutic framework of CFT may be of critical importance as the effects of the psychedelic experience are augmented due to the psychologically insightful experiences during the navigation and integration sessions.
