Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapeutic approach created by Dr. Gabor Mate over several decades while working with both patients and retreat participants This approach gently uncovers an releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction and suppressed emotion embedded in the body that are at the root of mental and physical illness and addiction.

 

When clients perceive the therapeutic relationship as a safe container, compassion and curiosity allow them to acknowledge and examine the traumatic events that happened to them as children recognise the beliefs they internalised and feel the emotions they suppressed. This contributes to the healing process.

 

Using compassionate inquiry, both the individual and the therapist unveil the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories and body states that form the real message that words both express and conceal.

 

When we can release ourselves from the hold of these stories, a new way of being emerges, leading to spontaneity, choice, expansion and freedom.

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‘The purpose of compassionate inquiry is to drill down to the core stories people tell themselves to

get them to see what story they are telling themselves unconsciously what those beliefs are where

they came from and guide them to the possibility of letting go of those stories or letting go of the

hold those stories have on them’ — Dr. Gabor Mate.