Cultivating your Compassionate Other
A six week programme for Counsellors who are feeling held back in their practice by an inner critical voice
Commencing May 2025
Are you ready to get to know and understand your inner critical voice?
If you’re a counsellor who is noticing the presence of an inner critic, the work you’ve dedicated so much time and effort to mastering can lose its sense of joy and purpose. Instead, you’re left feeling exhausted from constantly trying to negotiate with what can feel like a relentless critical voice.
No matter how much you try to reason with it, nothing seems to make a difference; that voice is louder than ever.
“I come out of client sessions feeling like I’ve done a good job, but then something switches and my inner critic starts to make me doubt my competence.
It’s exhausting and it never ends.”
Does this sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone in feeling this way.
As a teacher and clinical supervisor, I hear so many students and long time qualified practitioners who are doubting their own competence due to an inner critical voice.
In some instances, this doubt is even making some counsellors ask the question ‘is this work even for me?’.
This leads to anxious and burnt out counsellors. Or even worse, much needed practitioners may even leave their roles, wind up their private practices and never really have that opportunity to come alongside the inner critic to really understand its motives.
“Compassion means a sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to try to alleviate and prevent it”
My compassionate intention for the group
This programme is in response to the pain and frustration that I’ve witnessed in my own supervisees and students, who struggle with the narrative from the inner critical voice. The difficulty of striving to be perfect, the compare and despair that is experienced when we see what other therapists are doing. The fantastic ideas to grow your practice that are stopped in their tracks due to the narrative from the inner critic.
I myself have an inner critic that used to negatively impact my practice; often to the point where I have abandoned projects thinking ‘but other people can do that better than me’. I have keenly felt the sadness and frustration that the inner critic can bring and I’ve experienced being a demotivated and exhausted counsellor as a result.
However, four years ago, I embarked on Compassion Focused Therapy training with the amazing Paul Gilbert and his philosophy and approach resulted in being the positive turning point in my counselling practice. I learnt my own blocks and resisters to receiving self-compassion, where these stem from in childhood and why they were still hanging around all those years later. I learnt how to create a Compassionate Other, someone who speaks to me with compassion and turns towards my suffering with the intention to alleviate it, who is often direct and forthright when needed, and always has my best interests at heart.
But most importantly, I got to know and understand the motives of my inner critic. I now can put a knowing arm around that part of me, with understanding that it comes from a very young place, and invite it to rest. I then choose to draw upon my Compassionate Other, whose voice is now louder, more convincing, and most importantly comes from my Adult here and now place.
My Masters research focused on how a compassion focused group may offer a helpful space to cultivate a Compassionate Other, supported by the sense of community and shared experience of the group. My compassionate intention is to create a space for likeminded individuals to gather together and make sense of their own inner critic, as well as offering empathy and UPR to others in their group. My aim is to create a collaborative and nourishing group climate for self discovery and personal development, and ultimately to share what has worked for me in my practice in the hope that I too can turn towards your suffering with the intention to try to alleviate it.
Do you find yourself…
Worrying that you don’t know enough, so you spent lots of time and money on further training hoping that it will make you feel good enough, and it rarely does
Comparing and despairing when scrolling through counsellor networking pages on social media, thinking that ‘everyone is doing it better than me!’
Ruminating about clients, worrying that you’re not giving them ‘value for money’
Starting to dread client sessions knowing that the inner critic will show up afterwards to tell you how bad you did, leaving you feeling worn out
Holding back from participating in group supervision and/or training groups because your inner critic is telling you ‘shhhh, you’re only going to make a fool of yourself’. Only for someone else to say the exact thing you were thinking!
Imagine instead, finding yourself…
feeling confident and grounded in your practice, accounting for the years of training that you’ve undertaken;
feeling rooted in your chosen modality and releasing the idea that other modalities that other counsellors are using are somehow better;
being able to pause when you feel that urge to sign up to CPD that really doesn’t even interest you or serve your chosen clients;
accepting that you are being (rather than doing) enough for your clients;
turning that dread of client sessions into genuine curiosity into the dynamics showing up and moving out of your inner critic’s agenda and back into the frame of reference of your client;
feeling comfortable to show up in groups, without having to censor yourself, and with a genuine curiosity to simply see how people receive you
but most importantly…finding joy in your counselling practice.
The aim of this six week personal development programme is to help you:
be able to pause when the critical voice shows up in your counselling practice and have some choice in how you receive and respond to it;
tune into another voice, a more helpful voice, that in time becomes louder and more accessible than the inner critic;
practice self-compassion, (true self-compassion), daily without guilt;
tolerate the discomfort of the inner critic with new awareness of its motives;
gently manage your inner critic in a way that brings you freedom in your counselling practice to flourish and grow.
So, is this just more CPD?
There’s no doubt that you can use the hours from this programme for your annual CPD requirement; however, the programme is not designed to be purely CPD.
You will learn some of the philosophies and concepts from Compassion Focused Therapy, which of course you may choose to take back to your client work; however, this programme offers much more.
There will be elements of psychoeducation, as mentioned above, woven around a much more relational and therapeutic group experience. This will be an experiential group where we will try out together the tools and techniques needed to cultivate a Compassionate Other.
We will take part in guided imagery practices together, learn the art of Soothing Rhythm Breathing, and some weeks we may even get creative.
This will be challenging work where you may feel a sense of vulnerability as we move through the weeks, each sharing our experiences, thoughts and feelings around our own inner critic.
In every group that I run, it is always my goal to create an environment of ‘safe-uncertainty’ within the group, where you feel safe enough to be uncertain with each other, without fear of criticism or judgement.
Cultivating your Compassionate Other
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Pre-group
Tuesday 24 March 2025
11:00 - 12:00
I will be running a live webinar for anyone who is interested in finding out more about the programme.
A space to ask questions or even just get a feel of what it might be like to work with me.
There is no expectation to sign up for the main programme. This is just a space to be curious.
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The Programme
Live online (via Zoom) 10:30-12:30 on
1 May 2025
8 May 2025
15 May 2025
29 May 2025
5 June 2025
12 June 2025
Cost: £295
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Moving forward group: The Compassion Campfire
After completing the programme, there will be a space available for you, if you would like it, to join a connection group that will gather together once a month. This is at no cost to you.
The aim of this group is to provide community and connection. A space to share tips and new awareness about how you are connecting to your Compassionate Other, and managing your inner critic.
A window in your week to attend to your inner critic with the support of the wider group.
Attend the webinar
To sign up to the webinar on 24 March 2025 at 11am, please click here.