It is common practice in the treatment of mental disorders to classify those who seek help into diagnostic categories and to determine the course of therapy according to these categories. Diagnosis can provide a point of reference for the helping professional, guiding his or her attention in mapping the problem, understanding the impaired psychological functioning, and planning effective treatment. Yet a growing number of professionals believe that there are great dangers in categorising. Diagnosis can become a stigma, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and can contribute to the shameful isolation of the diagnosed person from his or her peers, who may view him or her with suspicion and marginalise him or her.
Many modern psychotherapeutic approaches focus on inner psychological processes rather than categorising disorders. Neuropsychological research has shown that these processes manifest in similar ways in several diagnostic categories. One such process is the functioning and interaction of the three emotion regulation systems. If I am confronted with a diagnostic category, it can easily close me down, create feelings of shame, and make me feel hopeless about recovery. Whereas if I understand what internal processes need improvement, I can more easily accept my own limitations and feel a hopeful boost that moves me towards practice.

In both cases, we are talking about the same experience of problems. However, their interpretation is very different and affects the healing process in different ways.
In order to be considered a psychotherapeutic movement, a movement must, among other things, have a model describing mental processes and, on the basis of this model, develop a specific method for treating psychological disorders. The Compassion Focused Therapy model describes psychological disorders as different patterns of imbalance in emotion regulation systems and aims to restore the balance between them as the focus of intervention. Knowledge of evolutionary psychology and neuropsychology has been important in the development of this model.
During evolution, the mammalian brain has evolved so that the green system can regulate the red system. One reason for this is that mammalian babies are born helpless and their survival depends on their parents caring for them over a long period of time. This care requires physical closeness, which requires the mammalian parent to be able to regulate the fight-or-flight response. As a consequence, the activation of the caring system can also reduce the intensity of unpleasant feelings.

Human compassion evolved from the mammalian caring system. In humans, this system is not limited to caring for our own offspring, but becomes universal, including caring for ourselves. Compassion activates the green system through its relationship with the caring system.
In the model of Compassion Focused Therapy, psychological disorders are explained by an imbalance between emotion regulation systems. When the red system is predominant, emotions of anxiety and sadness dominate and depressive or anxiety disorders can develop. The blue system is predominant in manic, addictive and narcissistic disorders. In obsessive-compulsive disorders, there is an overactivity of both the red and blue emotion regulation systems.
Since underfunctioning of the green system is a common feature of all psychological disorders, the main intervention point in Compassion-Focused Therapy is the development of this system. The main aim is to train the green system through compassion exercises, which will then automatically regulate the red and blue systems. The central tool of this therapy is Compassionate Mind Training, where the (self-)compassion skills of the participants are developed through various exercises.

The training is also used outside psychotherapy. The main difference between training and therapy is that, in addition to compassion practices, the essential elements of therapy are: the therapeutic relationship/alliance, contracting, assessment, case formulation, setting the therapeutic goal, and developing an intervention plan. Compassion is not therapy in itself, but it is therapeutic. And in the Compassion-focused therapeutic orientation, it greatly increases the effectiveness of therapy when integrated into the essential elements of psychotherapies. It proves to be the "philosopher's stone" that personalizes and accommodates all the therapeutic elements and tools that have been developed with the intention of healing over the decades of psychotherapies' history.
I can draw my three emotion regulation systems on a page as three circles. How are they sized in relation to each other? How do they regulate each other? In each circle I can write the names of the people, memories, desires, activities that belong to each circle. Am I satisfied with what my drawing shows? Is there anything I would change? I can draw the way I want it to be and look for what I can change to achieve the state I want.