Compassionate Self Inquiry: For Healing Trauma & Stress in a Toxic Culture

Compassionate Self Inquiry: For Healing Trauma & Stress in a Toxic Culture

Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapeutic method developed by Dr. Gabor Maté that reveals what lies beneath the appearance we present to the world.

Using Compassionate Inquiry, the therapist unveils the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories and body states that form the real message that words both express and conceal.

Through Compassionate Inquiry, the client can recognize the unconscious dynamics that run their lives and how to liberate themselves from them.

Stress & Trauma factors

Stress is ubiquitous these days — it plays a role in the workplace, in the home, and virtually everywhere that people interact. It can take a heavy toll unless it is recognized and managed effectively and insightfully.

Western Medicine tends to treat mind and body as separate entities. This separation, which has always gone against ancient human wisdom, has now been demonstrated by modern science to be not only artificial, but false. The brain and body systems that process emotions are intimately connected with the hormonal apparatus, the nervous system, and in particular the immune system. Emotional stress, especially of the hidden kind that people are not aware of, undermines immunity, disrupts the body’s physiological milieu and can prepare the ground for disease. If properly understood, these conditions can provide important openings for compassion and self-awareness, which in turn are major tools in recovery and healing.

This talk shows how a society dedicated to material pursuits rather than genuine human needs and spiritual values stresses its members, undermines healthy child development and dooms many to chronic illness, from diabetes to heart disease, from autoimmune conditions to cancer, from depression to other mental health diagnoses.

The process of Compassionate Self Inquiry

Dr. Maté will model the process of Compassionate Inquiry with course participants and instruct therapists in the practice of this powerful technique to help clients access deep healing and transformation. This will be both an experiential, participatory workshop where participants will be guided through their own personal process, as well as a training to teach the method of Compassionate Inquiry to health professionals, therapists and social workers.