According to Gilbert, "One of its key concerns is to use compassionate mind training to help people develop and work with experiences of inner warmth, safeness and soothing, via compassion and self-compassion.
[5]: 59 Through the use of techniques such as compassionate mind training and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), counselling clients can learn to manage each system more effectively and respond more appropriately to situations.
[8]: 4 The central focus of CFT is to concentrate on helping clients relate to their difficulties in compassionate ways, as well as provide them with effective tools to work with challenging circumstances and emotions they encounter.
[9] CFT helps those learn tools to engage with their battles in accepting and encouraging ways, thereby aiding themselves to feel confident about accomplishing difficult tasks and dealing with challenging situations.
[14] A 2014 literature review found CFT-E to be a particularly effective treatment for eating disorders due to the fact that it confronts the "high levels of shame and self‐criticism" that patients often experience.
[21] Beaumont and Hollins Martin (2015)[22] examined narrative reviews of 12 research findings that has shown use of CFT to treat and experiment with psychological outcomes in clinical populations.
[22] The findings of Beaumont and Hollins Martin (2015) recommended that the effectiveness of CFT needs further extensive research in order to fully examine reductions in mental illnesses and overall improvements in quality of life.
[22] This study recommends for consideration of larger samples of participants in order to ensure that CFT can be independently effective without other psychotherapy interventions involved such as CBT.