Compassionate Inquiry
Trauma is not just the harmful things that happen to a person, but also the absence of the vital, nourishing things that should have happened—such as unfulfilled emotional needs, safety, and connection.
Compassionate Inquiry in Brisbane
Trauma, from the Greek word for “wound”, can affect your sense of connection with yourself and others. You may feel disconnected from your body, emotions or intuition, or find it difficult to imagine feeling connected again.
Complex trauma doesn’t have to be physical abuse, but attachment is so affected by it because it is usually perpetrated by, or not able to be stopped by, a child’s primary caregiver.
Compassionate Inquiry offers a gentle, trauma-informed way to explore beliefs, emotional wounds and protective patterns. We include bodily awareness alongside conversation to support self-understanding and authenticity.
Developed by Dr Gabor Maté, Compassionate Inquiry invites curiosity about how you learned to adapt. We explore the meaning of your experience and the beliefs beneath your current difficulties, without assuming that we already know their cause. Rather than asking “What's wrong with me?”, we become curious about “What happened to me, and how did I learn to adapt?”
Rather than simply trying to eliminate or manage symptoms, we look beneath them with curiosity and compassion. The work may include your attachment style, unmet emotional needs, and how an attachment wound influences your relationships and the way you move through the world. We notice what happens in the present as you talk, including emotions, physical sensations and protective responses.
Who this therapy may suit
- You understand intellectually why you do something but still find yourself repeating it.
- You struggle with people-pleasing, perfectionism, self-criticism, or constantly putting others' needs before your own.
- You have ADD or ADHD and would like to better understand your nervous system, emotions, and patterns of regulation.
- You feel a lot; you have high sensitivity.
- You find it difficult to say no, set boundaries, or express what you genuinely need.
- You often seek approval, fear rejection, or worry about disappointing others.
- You want to understand and respond to your emotional triggers.
- You feel disconnected from yourself or unsure of what you truly want.
- You experience anxiety, emotional overwhelm, shame, anger, or persistent stress.
- You have behaviours or coping strategies that provide temporary relief but create difficulties over time.
- You feel stuck in recurring relationship patterns.
- You have difficulty trusting yourself, your feelings, or your own decisions.
- You find yourself constantly adapting to other people while losing touch with yourself.
- You want to understand the connection between your past experiences and the way you live, relate, and respond today.
- You want to explore the difference between who you learned to be and who you are underneath those adaptations.
And that’s what makes it so fundamentally disruptive: the primary caregiver can’t provide consistency and safety to the child.
How we work
Compassionate Inquiry is not about judging, analysing, or trying to force change. We slow down and become curious about what is happening beneath the surface.
We may explore a thought, emotion, behaviour, physical sensation, relationship pattern (attachment style), or reaction and gently ask what it is underneath. Together, we can begin to uncover the beliefs and protective strategies that developed in response to your experiences and understand what they were trying to protect you from.
The process also brings attention to your body and nervous system. What you think, feel, and believe is not separate from how your body responds. By developing greater awareness of these connections, you can begin to recognise patterns that once happened automatically and discover new ways to respond.
The intention is not to get rid of parts of yourself. It is to understand them with greater compassion, develop more choice, and reconnect with your authentic needs, feelings, and values.
What is Compassionate Inquiry? A plain explanationFrom adaptation to authenticity
Many of us learned early in life that being ourselves was not always safe, welcomed, or accepted. We may have learned to please, perform, achieve, stay quiet, disconnect, control, or care for others to maintain connection and belonging.
These adaptations can be incredibly intelligent responses to our circumstances. But what once helped us cope may later become a source of anxiety, disconnection, relationship difficulties, or feeling stuck.
Compassionate Inquiry offers a space to understand these patterns without shame and to explore what becomes possible when you no longer have to live entirely from them.
What this isn't
Compassionate Inquiry is not about blaming your parents, endlessly analysing the past, or searching for someone or something to blame for your struggles. It is also not about forcing you to revisit painful experiences or relive trauma.
It is not simply positive thinking, advice-giving, or trying to eliminate difficult emotions. Instead, the approach invites compassionate curiosity about what is happening beneath your thoughts, behaviours, emotions, and coping patterns, while recognising that many of these developed as meaningful adaptations to your experiences.
Compassionate Inquiry is also not about “fixing” you. The intention is to develop greater awareness and compassion for the ways you have learned to survive and adapt, so you can begin to recognise what is happening in the present and have more choice in how you respond.
Common questions
- Do I have to talk about everything that happened to me?
No. You do not need to tell your entire story or revisit experiences before you are ready. We can begin with what you notice now, including thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, behaviours and relationship patterns, and explore what feels relevant and manageable.
- Is Compassionate Inquiry just talking about my childhood?
Your childhood and past experiences may be relevant, but the goal is not to reconstruct your entire history. We focus on how your experiences may have shaped the beliefs, coping strategies, and patterns still operating in your life today.
- Will I be told that everything comes from my childhood?
No. Compassionate Inquiry is about curiosity, not assumptions. We explore what is happening in your experience and consider the context around it, rather than automatically attributing everything to childhood or trauma.
- Is Compassionate Inquiry about blaming my parents?
No. The approach is not about assigning blame. It is about understanding how your experiences shaped how you learned to adapt, protect yourself, seek connection, and navigate the world. Understanding these patterns can create more compassion and choice without reducing your story to blame.
- What if I already understand why I behave this way?
Understanding a pattern intellectually does not always change how it feels. We slow down and explore the emotions, physical responses, beliefs and needs beneath the explanation. This can help you connect what you understand with how you feel and respond.
The aim is to help you feel more connected with yourself and bring that understanding into everyday life.
- Is this the same as positive thinking?
No. Compassionate Inquiry does not ask you to replace difficult thoughts with positive ones or talk yourself out of how you feel. Instead, we become curious about difficult experiences and the meaning they hold, without judging them or trying to change them immediately.
- Will I have to relive traumatic experiences?
No. The intention is not to force you to relive or repeatedly retell traumatic experiences. We work with what is present and relevant, respecting your capacity and allowing the process to unfold gradually.
- What if I become emotional during a session?
Emotions are welcome in the room. You do not need to suppress them or perform them. We can slow down, notice what is happening, and explore the experience with curiosity and compassion while staying attentive to your capacity.
- How is Compassionate Inquiry different from traditional talk therapy?
Compassionate Inquiry includes conversation and reflection alongside awareness of physical sensations, emotions and protective responses. We explore how these experiences connect with the beliefs and relationship patterns affecting your life now.
- How long does Compassionate Inquiry therapy take?
There is no fixed timeframe. The length of therapy depends on your goals, circumstances, history and what you want to explore. Some people seek support for a specific issue; others choose longer-term work on longstanding patterns and relationships.
- Do I need to know what I want to work on before I start?
No. You can begin with a sense that something is not working, that you feel stuck, or that you want to understand yourself differently. We can develop a clearer focus together as the work unfolds.
Before we start, one important thing
This therapy is not a substitute for crisis or safety intervention. It isn't appropriate if you are currently in an unsafe or dangerous situation, or if you are at immediate risk of harming yourself or ending your life. In those circumstances you need crisis, emergency or specialised support first.
Somatic psychotherapy is also unsuitable for people who have recently faced, or are currently facing, legal allegations.
You might also be looking at
Somatic Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy
Somatic Counselling
Ready to start?
Book a first session, or write to me if you'd rather ask something before you do.