Overview
Mindful Self-Compassion for Professionals (MSC) is an evidence-informed program designed to support psychologists and health professionals to strengthen professional resilience, enhance wellbeing, and reduce the impact of stress, burnout and compassion fatigue. Grounded in the empirically validated Mindful Self-Compassion program developed by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, the course integrates mindfulness and compassion-based strategies to help participants respond to personal and professional challenges with greater steadiness, self-kindness and emotional balance.
Delivered in-person in a supportive format, the program combines didactic teaching with experiential learning, including guided mindfulness and self-compassion practices, reflective exercises, and practical strategies that participants can apply immediately in daily life and clinical work.
Key experiential learning components include:
- developing a grounded understanding of self-compassion and mindfulness and how they function together,
- exploring common barriers to self-compassion (including fears, resistance and “backdraft”) and learning strategies to work with these skilfully,
- practising compassion-based techniques for managing distress, including approaches for working with difficult emotions and shame,
- strengthening capacity to meet interpersonal stress with steadiness, including practices focused on challenging relationships, disconnection, unmet needs, and caregiving fatigue,
- cultivating positive emotional states and wellbeing through exercises focused on gratitude, savouring, self-appreciation and happiness,
- identifying personal core values, and using mindfulness and compassion to support sustainable action aligned with those values, and
- engaging in structured discussion and reflection to consolidate learning and build ongoing practice capability.
Throughout the program, participants are supported to translate learning into practical outcomes through guided reflection and ongoing suggestions for home practice, strengthening their ability to maintain mindfulness and self-compassion skills in everyday and professional contexts
Target audience
This activity is suitable for Psychologists, Academics, Psychology students, General Practitioners, and Allied Health Professionals such as Social Workers, Occupational Therapists and others working in counselling, teachers, Nurses, Coaches and generally anyone in a helping role.
Level of learning
Foundational/Intermediate. This activity is targeted to those new to the topic and those who have some previous learning on the topic.
Professional competencies for psychology
The Psychology Board of Australia (PsyBA) have updated the Professional competencies for psychology which came into effect on 1 December 2025. This activity addresses the following PsyBA Professional competencies for psychology: 1, 2, & 3.
APS CPD-Approved
This activity has been assessed against the APS Standards for CPD activities and approved for its education quality. Learn more about the APS CPD Approval process.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this in-person workshop, participants should be able to:
- apply mindfulness and self-compassion skills in daily life to support emotional regulation and well-being,
- demonstrate compassionate motivation in place of self-criticism,
- integrate mindfulness and compassion practices to ease difficult emotions, relationships, burnout/fatigue, whilst supporting the promotion of positive emotions,c
- cultivate intentional living through reflection on personal values, courage, and meaning, and
- teach foundational mindfulness and self-compassion strategies to clients, students, or children in appropriate contexts.
Presenter(s)
Marie Bloomfield, Marianna Lolas
About the presenter(s)
Marie Bloomfield
Marie Bloomfield is an endorsed Clinical Psychologist with psychologist registration since 1990, and a long-standing APS Member and member of the APS College of Clinical Psychologists. With more than three decades of clinical experience across public and private settings, Marie brings depth, rigour, and compassion to her work with individuals and groups.
Marie is also a highly regarded trainer and facilitator in mindfulness and compassion-based approaches. She is an accredited teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC), trained and accredited through the University of San Diego (2014), and has delivered mindfulness and compassion-based programs consistently since 2011, including MBSR, MBCT and MSC. Her teaching includes multi-day workshops and structured 8-week programs for both community participants and mental health professionals, alongside retreats delivered across locations including Canberra and the Gold Coast.
In addition, Marie has demonstrated leadership in supervision and professional development, facilitating monthly Compassion-Focused Therapy practice and supervision meetings for psychologists and social workers, and engaging in ongoing advanced professional training in compassion-focused modalities.
Marianna Lolas
Marianna Lolas is a Clinical Psychologist, mindfulness and meditation teacher, and qualified Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) teacher. She is known for her warm, values-led approach, integrating compassion, scientific knowledge and evidence-based practice to empower clients and support meaningful psychological change.
Marianna brings diverse clinical experience across adult and child populations, with capability spanning assessment, formulation and intervention for a wide range of presentations including mood and anxiety disorders, trauma/PTSD, OCD, eating disorders and personality-related difficulties. She draws on an integrative toolkit that includes CBT, ACT, DBT, Schema Therapy, Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and EMDR (including EMDR with children).
As the founder of Blue Wren Psychology and Wellness Centre, Marianna has demonstrated strong leadership and commitment to community-based wellbeing. She has taught an 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion course yearly since 2021, facilitates mindfulness workshops and online programs, supports retreat delivery, and leads a weekly online meditation community (“Mindful Wren Sangha”). Her continued professional development includes mindfulness teacher certification training through Sounds True (Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield), reflecting ongoing commitment to excellence in contemplative and compassion-based practice.