Compassionate Inquiry

Compassionate Inquiry (CI) is a therepeutical approach for healing trauma, developed by Canadian psychitherapist and physician Dr. Gabor Maté. It gently uncovers and releases the layers of childhood trauma, constriction, and suppressed emotion embedded in the body that are at the root of illness and addiction.

Compassion means to be with someone in their suffering without trying to fix it, deny it or wanting it make it go away. It also means to be in resonance to whatever the other person is experiencing. There are some of the therapist’s qualities according to CI – compassion, empathetic abiding presence, non-judgement, authenticity, self-awareness.

Compassionate Inquiry is a somatic approach led by the client. Led by the client means that the therepist doesn’t have an intention for the client or an implicit expectation that the client should change. The client is leading the process, while the therapist, being attuned to the client, asks questions and mirrors back what they hear, without giving prescription or trying to fix the client. The focus is to recognize that each belief, trigger and many of our emotions are from the past. Through the sensations in the body the client usually gets access to a memory from the past and is now able to rewire this memory by reparenting their inner child through compassion.

Compassionate Inquiry is very efficient for healing addiction because it explores addiction as a mechanism to cope with the pain of our needs not being met as children in a compassionate way. The question is not why the addiction but why the pain that we try to soothe.

Dr. Gabor Maté describes his approach as such: “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.”

I have completed a year-long Compassion Inquiry professional training and I’m currently into the mentorhip program to be certified as a CI Practitioner. I work with this method in individual sessions or in combination with other therapeutical work, for example the Childhood Deconditioning process in 10 sessions.

Fee per 60 minutes CI session: 60 euro.

Testimonials

“Marina is wonderful at holding space and guiding compassionate inquiry. Throughout each session she ensured I felt OK throughout, never pushing me further than I wanted to go. Yet she also was able to gently point out my blind spots for me to see. I felt really heard and seen throughout our time together and was able to explore repressed parts of me and gain greater ease and clarity for my life and past wounds. Thank you Marina!” – Louise McGuinness, UK

“Marina brings both a gentle and grounding presence to Compassionate Inquiry sessions. As she guides the session, she creates a warm and supportive environment in which responses to echoes of trauma can be acknowledged and processed in a structured and manageable way. Marina has a wonderful ability to remain attentive and focused, patient and responsive, while enabling the client’s lost voice to gradually manifest. I concluded each session calm, reflective and rewarded with a greater insight into my self and my past and present needs.” – Dan from Adelaide, Australia