Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) · Chicago, IL
You would never speak to a friend the way you speak to yourself. CFT can help you change that.
Compassion Focused Therapy is a therapeutic approach specifically designed for people who struggle with intense shame, relentless self-criticism, and an inner critic that dominates their internal experience. Rather than pushing toward toxic positivity or forced self-love, CFT helps you develop a genuinely kinder relationship with yourself.
I bring a Compassion Focused Therapy lens into most of my sessions with clients in Chicago, Illinois, because in my clinical experience, negative self-talk and shame are present in almost every presenting concern — anxiety, OCD, relationship difficulties, life transitions, perfectionism.
Developing a kinder relationship with yourself — not through affirmations, but through practice
CFT was developed specifically for people who experience high levels of shame, self-criticism, and self-directed hostility. Its central insight is straightforward and yet consistently surprising to the people who come to therapy: most of us treat ourselves far more harshly than we would ever treat anyone else.
CFT does not try to replace the inner critic with forced positivity. It does not ask you to repeat affirmations you do not believe. It works by helping you develop and strengthen a compassionate self — a genuine part of you that can respond to your struggles with understanding, patience, and care rather than judgment. With repetition and practice, that compassionate voice becomes stronger and more accessible. The inner critic does not disappear, but it no longer runs the show without competition.
A question I often ask clients: "What are you not getting to face, feel, or experience in life because your inner critic is so loud?" That question alone can open up something significant, and it gets to the heart of what CFT is trying to address.
One of the most clinically important aspects of CFT is its attention to what I call the two-layer emotion problem. There is the difficult feeling itself, and then there is how we feel about having that feeling. Many clients in Chicago come to therapy feeling anxious and then feeling ashamed about being anxious, or feeling depressed and then feeling worthless for being depressed. CFT specifically targets that second layer.
CFT is especially powerful for people who find it easier to be kind to others than to themselves
Self-compassion is not the same as self-indulgence. People with higher self-compassion actually take more responsibility for their mistakes and are more resilient after failure — not less.
The Relentless Inner Critic
People who hold themselves to standards they would never apply to anyone else in their lives.
Shame and Guilt
Anyone who experiences significant shame, guilt, or the persistent and pervasive sense of not being good enough.
High Achievers and Perfectionists
Chicago high achievers and perfectionists whose drive is powered primarily by fear and self-criticism rather than genuine motivation or values.
<No Self-Compassion Practice
People who find it genuinely easy to be compassionate toward others but have no idea what self-compassion even means or feels like for themselves.
OCD with Shame
Clients working through OCD who experience intense shame about their intrusive thoughts, particularly with harm OCD, moral scrupulosity, or ROCD.
Anxiety or Depression with Shame
Teens and adults dealing with anxiety or depression who feel additional shame and self-judgment about the fact that they are struggling at all.
Life Transitions
Anyone navigating a significant life transition who is beating themselves up relentlessly for not having everything figured out during an inherently uncertain time.
Relationship Difficulties
People in relationship difficulties who internalize conflict as evidence that something is fundamentally and permanently wrong with them.
Anyone Exhausted by Self-Criticism
If you have been running on self-criticism as fuel for years and are exhausted by it — CFT offers a fundamentally different way of relating to yourself.
Building the compassionate self — step by step
In Compassion Focused Therapy sessions, we work together to identify the inner critic, understand what it is genuinely trying to protect you from, and begin bringing a compassionate self into the room alongside it:
| Step | What It Involves |
|---|---|
| Identifying the inner critic | Noticing the voice of self-criticism: what it says, when it is loudest, what specific situations trigger it, and what it is ultimately afraid would happen if it stopped. |
| Understanding the critic's function | The inner critic usually developed for a reason — often as a way of staying safe, maintaining performance, or preserving connection in an environment that seemed to require it. |
| Visualizing the compassionate self | Developing a sense of what your compassionate self looks and feels like. Some clients give this part of themselves a name or image. Others simply practice accessing a different internal tone. |
| Allowing both to coexist | The goal is not to silence the inner critic. It is to recognize that both the inner critic and the compassionate self can be present, and to consciously practice choosing which one to respond from. |
| Building the compassionate voice | With repetition, the compassionate self grows stronger and more automatic. The brain changes with practice. What starts as effortful gradually becomes more natural and genuinely felt. |
| Addressing secondary emotions | Working specifically on the shame or self-judgment that layers on top of primary difficult feelings, so that the underlying emotion can be processed rather than buried under compounding self-attack. |
A compassionate lens that makes everything else more effective
People with anxiety often feel shame about being anxious. CFT helps them relate to anxiety as a human response rather than a personal failing, which reduces the secondary suffering and makes the anxiety itself more workable.
OCD often arrives with intense shame about intrusive thoughts, particularly for harm OCD, moral scrupulosity, and ROCD. CFT helps clients recognize that having these thoughts does not make them bad people, reducing the shame that fuels and maintains the OCD cycle.
People who struggle in relationships often internalize that something is fundamentally wrong with them. CFT directly addresses those beliefs, building self-worth and a more compassionate self-concept that changes how they show up with others.
People put enormous pressure on themselves to have everything figured out during periods of change. CFT provides relief from that pressure, helping clients in Chicago be genuinely kinder to themselves in the disorienting and uncertain middle of a major transition.
Depression
Depression is often accompanied by harsh self-judgment and a deep sense of worthlessness. CFT addresses those beliefs not by arguing against them but by building a new, experienced way of relating to oneself that does not depend on believing the critic.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is driven by the belief that making mistakes is not acceptable and that errors reveal fundamental inadequacy. CFT addresses the emotional texture underneath that belief in a way that logic alone often cannot reach.
CFT therapy questions, answered
What is Compassion Focused Therapy and who is it for?
Compassion Focused Therapy is a therapeutic approach designed specifically for people who struggle with high levels of shame, self-criticism, and a harsh inner critic. It was developed for clients who find it difficult to extend kindness and understanding to themselves, even when they readily extend it to others. CFT is not about toxic positivity or repeating affirmations you do not believe. It is about developing a genuinely more compassionate inner relationship, one grounded in the recognition that suffering and struggle are universal human experiences and not evidence of personal failure or inadequacy. I bring a CFT lens into most of my sessions with teens and adults in Chicago, Illinois, because in my clinical experience, some degree of shame and self-criticism shows up in almost every presenting concern.
How is self-compassion different from self-indulgence?
This is one of the most important questions to address, because many people resist the idea of self-compassion because they equate it with letting themselves off the hook, becoming less disciplined, or lowering their standards. The research is actually quite clear in the opposite direction. People with higher self-compassion tend to take more responsibility for their mistakes rather than less, because they are not spending energy defending against the shame that self-criticism generates. They tend to be more resilient after failure, more willing to try again, and more genuinely motivated, because their motivation comes from values and genuine desire rather than fear of self-punishment. Self-compassion is not telling yourself everything is fine when it is not. It is treating your struggles with the same patience, understanding, and care that you would offer to a person you genuinely love and respect.
I know I am too hard on myself. Why can I not just stop?
Because the inner critic is not a voluntary choice. It is a deeply learned response, often developed in childhood or early life as a way of staying safe, maintaining performance, preserving connection, or managing an unpredictable environment. If being harsh on yourself was how you motivated yourself to succeed, how you stayed out of trouble, or how you maintained some sense of control in an uncertain environment, that pattern becomes automatic and deeply ingrained. CFT does not ask you to simply decide to be kinder to yourself. It works with those underlying patterns systematically, building a new internal resource through practice and repetition rather than by simply arguing the critic away. Most of my clients in Chicago are genuinely surprised, when they step back in therapy, by just how relentlessly and harshly they speak to themselves.
Can CFT help with perfectionism?
Yes, and perfectionism is one of the areas where I find CFT particularly valuable and often irreplaceable. Perfectionism is sustained by the belief that making mistakes is unacceptable and that errors reveal something fundamentally inadequate about you. CBT can examine the accuracy of that belief and offer more realistic alternatives. CFT addresses the emotional texture underneath it — the shame, the fear of exposure, the grinding pressure — in a way that logic and reframing alone often cannot fully reach. When a client can genuinely begin to relate to their mistakes and limitations with understanding rather than punishment, the rigidity of perfectionism often begins to soften in a way that feels real and lasting rather than effortful and forced.
How does CFT work alongside other therapeutic approaches?
I use CFT in combination with other modalities in most of my clinical work in Chicago. It pairs naturally with CBT, which addresses the content and accuracy of self-critical thoughts, while CFT addresses the emotional tone and the self-relational dimension that CBT does not specifically target. It pairs well with ACT, which also emphasizes a nonjudgmental relationship with internal experience and values-based living. And it is an important complement to ERP for OCD, where shame about intrusive thoughts can be a significant barrier to full engagement with the exposure work. In practice, I weave a compassionate lens throughout sessions regardless of the primary approach, because it tends to make everything else more effective, more sustainable, and more genuinely felt rather than intellectually understood but emotionally unresolved.
You deserve the same kindness you give to everyone else.
Compassion Focused Therapy in Chicago for teens and adults. Virtual and in-person sessions available throughout Illinois. Book your free consultation today.