While compassion focused therapy, or CFT, is concerned with psychoeducation and skills building, an essential aspect to it is the therapeutic relationship. It’s so important for the CFT therapist to listen well, and create a relationship where the person they’e working with feels heard and understood, and feels safe. Certain key listening skills help to facilitate guided discovery, helping people feel safe enough to explore and understand themselves, the way their minds, and the minds of others, work, and to start to relate to themselves and others in a way that’s motivated by compassion. Guided discovery is at the heart of CFT. In this video, Dr Stan Steindl discusses some of the finer points of the therapeutic relationship in CFT, and the listening skills that can really help with that. The original YouTube video can be found here: https://youtu.be/RLXy0GDjGYE