What Is Compassionate Inquiry® and Why Might It Matter to You?
Compassionate Inquiry®(CI) is a gentle yet deeply transformative therapeutic approach developed by Dr Gabor Matéand Sat Dharam Kaur. At its heart, it invites us to turn towards ourselves with curiosity, kindness and honesty, rather than judgement or force.
Many of us move through life doing our best to manage uncomfortable emotions, physical symptoms or recurring patterns — often without truly understanding where they come from. Compassionate Inquiry offers a way of slowing down and listening beneath the surface, allowing us to explore how our past experiences continue to shape our inner world today.
How Our Early Experiences Shape Us
As children, we adapt in order to belong, to feel safe and to be loved. In doing so, we often form beliefs about ourselves and the world: I'm too much. I'm not enough. I need to please. It's not safe to express how I feel. These beliefs were never chosen consciously; they were learned in response to what happened, or didn't happen, when we were young.
Over time, these early beliefs quietly shape how we relate to ourselves, how we connect with others and how we move through life. They don't just live in our minds. They live in our bodies too. Our nervous system responds, our muscles tighten, our breath changes, and emotions arise that may feel overwhelming or confusing.
Compassionate Inquiry helps us to gently join these dots. If you recognise these patterns in yourself, you may also find it helpful to learn more about Complex Trauma (C-PTSD) and how early experiences shape our nervous system.
Increasing Our Capacity to Be With What We Feel
One of the most powerful outcomes of Compassionate Inquiry is that it increases our capacity to sit with our emotions. Rather than pushing feelings away or becoming flooded by them, we learn to meet them with presence and care.
In a CI session, we explore the connection between:
- The beliefs we carry
- The emotions that arise
- The sensations we feel in the body
By staying curious and compassionate, we begin to understand why these responses are there and how they express themselves. What once felt like a problem starts to make sense.
This process allows us to offer ourselves something many of us didn't receive enough of as children: to be seen, heard, understood and held with kindness.
Re-parenting With Compassion
Compassionate Inquiry creates an opportunity to meet the younger parts of ourselves. The parts that learned to adapt, to hide, to cope. Instead of criticising or bypassing them, we learn to be with them in a new way.
With support, we begin to offer ourselves:
- Compassion instead of self-judgement
- Presence instead of avoidance
- Understanding instead of shame
Over time, this can lead to a profound shift. We start to learn, not just intellectually, but in our bodies, that we were enough then, that we are worthy now, and that nothing essential about us was ever missing.
Why Someone Might Choose Compassionate Inquiry
People are often drawn to CI when they notice repeating patterns, emotional struggles, physical symptoms, or a sense of disconnection from themselves. Others come because they feel stuck, anxious, depleted, or simply curious to understand themselves more deeply.
Compassionate Inquiry doesn't aim to "fix" you. Instead, it creates the conditions for insight, healing and self-trust to emerge naturally.
The Outcomes
While each person's journey is unique, people often report:
- Greater emotional resilience
- A deeper sense of self-compassion
- Reduced inner conflict and shame
- Improved connection to their body
- More authentic relationships
- A felt sense of worthiness and enoughness
Compassionate Inquiry is an invitation to come home to yourself. To listen, to feel, and to remember who you were before you learned you had to be anything other than you.
If this approach resonates with you, I incorporate Compassionate Inquiry into my 1:1 therapy sessions. I also offer breathwork as a complementary practice for nervous system regulation and embodiment.
You're welcome to get in touch if you'd like to explore whether this way of working might be right for you.
