Compassion Based Awareness Therapy (CBAT)

A Deeper Look at the Philosophy That Guides Our Therapeutic Work

Compassion Based Awareness Therapy emerged through decades of clinical practice, personal therapy, and the training and supervision of developing therapists. CBAT is also deeply grounded in my spiritual practice and the teachings of Zen teacher Cheri Huber, which have profoundly shaped the way I practice, teach, and articulate this orientation. Her work offered language and clarity for what had long felt missing in both my own therapy and my work as a therapist, a way of understanding suffering as rooted in conditioned self-hatred rather than something inherently wrong with us.

Through long-term, dedicated practice and training with her, including intensive retreats and ongoing guidance, these teachings became lived rather than conceptual. CBAT would not exist without this practice and the way Cheri’s teachings have informed how I understand internal experience, the separation of egoic voices from who we are, and the possibility of ending self-abandonment.

The Practice Behind CBAT

CBAT begins with a foundational tenet: a person’s value is inherent. It is not earned, improved upon, nor can it be taken away. Your value simply is. And yet, most of us grow up believing that something is wrong with us.

This belief does not arise because caregivers intend harm. It develops through the process of socialization, aka, conditioning. The ways we learn how to belong, how to be acceptable, and how to survive in relationship is conditioned. Socialization happens to all of us. It shapes how we see ourselves, how we see others, how our experiences are interpreted, how we learn to relate to others, and how we experience the world.

Over time, these beliefs get internalized and we learn that parts of who we are must be hidden, controlled, or abandoned in order to be loved or safe. This internalized abandonment becomes a core source of suffering.

The impact of socialization extends far beyond our immediate family. Parents, siblings, extended family, religion, school, peers, teachers, social media, cultural messages, books, movies, politics, and collective trauma, including generational and historic trauma, all play a role in shaping our internal world.

While much of this influence is unintended, the beliefs that form in childhood shape the course of an entire life. Some beliefs are subtle and mildly limiting. Others are deeply painful and debilitating.

In addition to socialization, many people experience trauma. CBAT is a trauma-informed therapy, recognizing how early experiences shape belief systems, nervous system responses, and patterns of suffering. Trauma is not defined only by what happened externally, but by what happened internally as a result, the stories created around the event.

The mind is a meaning-making machine, it cannot not make meaning. At an early stage of development, the mind gains the capacity to create meaning and story. These stories, often formed in moments of vulnerability, become the unseen frameworks through which we experience ourselves and the world. When left unexamined, they quietly fuel suffering.

How CBAT Works in Therapy

In Compassion Based Awareness Therapy, curiosity leads. Together, therapist and client explore the interconnected systems that shape experience, including thoughts in the mind, sensations in the body, emotions, and the belief systems that organize them. When these elements operate together unconsciously, suffering begins. All at once it is like a symphony of suffering, everything playing at the same time. But when we tease them apart, on their own each is bearable, even if for only a moment.

This exploration is always collaborative and paced in a way that honors the body and the nervous system, supporting somatic awareness as part of the healing process. You are not pushed, analyzed, or pathologized. You are not doing this work alone.

The therapy space becomes a place where the relationship itself is part of the healing, a space that is respectful, safe, kind, and attuned. Many people long for these qualities but have never experienced them consistently and therefore have not learned how to offer them to themselves.

Through this process, clients gradually increase awareness of their own internal experience and how they relate to it.

The Role of Compassion

Compassion envelops the entire CBAT process. CBAT integrates mindfulness and compassion in therapy, allowing experience to be met with presence rather than judgment.

In this process you will discover what compassion is and what it is not. Niceness is a product of socialization. Kindness is heart-centered. Compassion includes all and compassion heals all.

Compassion does not bypass pain or force positivity. It invites the full range of human experience to be met with presence rather than judgment. If judgment is present, judgment is noticed and named. We refer to this practice as compassionate witnessing. Compassion heals not by fixing, but by allowing what is present to be witnessed without abandonment.

Compassion cannot be forced. It awakens. The relationship with your therapist re-introduces you to compassion. Over time, at your own pace, and if you stick with it, compassion does its magic and there comes a tipping point where you become actively engaged in nourishing and living in that compassion.

Awareness, Choice, and Freedom

In the journey of healing, behavior is often the last thing to change, because behavior is a symptom. It reflects what is happening internally, the beliefs being lived from, the emotions and sensations being navigated, and the degree of awareness and compassion available in the moment.

Of course, behavior matters. How we act in the world impacts ourselves and others. And yet, when behavior becomes the primary focus of therapy, change is often short-lived or experienced as forced.

In many traditional therapeutic approaches, cognitive or behavioral change is emphasized early in the process. From a CBAT perspective, this is short-sighted. Behavior can change more sustainably when there is a compassionate presence available to meet what is underneath it.

As awareness deepens and compassion becomes accessible, clients find themselves naturally at choice. From this place, new behaviors can be practiced, not as acts of self-correction, but as expressions of care. Change arises not from pressure, but from understanding.

Behavior shifts because something more fundamental has shifted.

Behavior as Outcome, Not Entry Point

Compassion Based Awareness Therapy offers a way of being with yourself that is grounded in curiosity, respect, and care. It is not about fixing what is wrong, because nothing is inherently wrong with you. It is about learning to relate differently to your internal experience and, in doing so, creating the possibility for greater freedom and ease in your life.

As one of my teachers offered me early in my own path:

We look forward to walking alongside you in this journey.

Laura Carr, LMFT & Daniel Carr, LMFT