Free Compassion Audio Tracks

The concept of compassion is frequently misunderstood. Amongst practitioners of compassion focused therapy (CFT), compassion is often defined as “a sensitivity to the suffering of self and others, with a commitment to relieve and prevent it”. This definition has two important parts. The first psychology of compassion involves being sensitive to and engaging in distress, whether in ourselves or someone else. The second psychology of compassion involves a commitment to skillfully relieve distress, and to prevent suffering from returning.

The Voice Tone exercise is a track taken from the Psychology Tools For Developing Self-Compassion audio collection. Care-giving and soothing received from others is often associated with particular behaviors and voice tones. Similarly, threatening and self-critical behaviors are associated with particular voice tones. Training ourselves to adopt behaviors that we associate with compassion, kindness, and care-giving can have the effect of increasing our ability to self-soothe. In this exercise, the listener is guided to speak some short phrases using different tones of voice and to reflect upon their felt sense when they feel these phrases ‘land’ when delivered in different tones of voice.