Dr Chris Germer is a clinical psychologist and lecturer on psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School, his primary interest is self-compassion—the warmhearted attitude of mindfulness when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate. He stumbled onto self-compassion in 2005 as a solution to his decades-long struggle with public speaking anxiety. Learning to be self-compassionate helped him to overcome anxious thoughts.
"I realised that when we are kind to ourselves, we immediately have this uprising of affection and care for others." Chris Germer - (FLOW International Magazine, January 2020)
He wrote a great book that I recommend reading called 'The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion- Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions.'
He co-developed the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program with Kristin Neff in 2010 and MSC has since been taught to over 100,000 people worldwide. They co-authored two books on MSC, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program.
In 2007, Chris began collaborating with Kristin Neff, psychology professor at the University of Texas, Austin, and pioneering researcher on self-compassion. In 2009, he wrote the book, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, and, in 2010, Chris and Kristin co-developed Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC), an empirically-supported, 8-week training program for the general public. The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion was established in 2012 and since then over 100,000 of people have learned MSC from over 3,000 teachers worldwide. A bestselling workbook on the MSC program appeared in 2018 and a professional textbook was released in 2019, both co-authored by Chris and Kristin.
In 2015, Chris helped to establish the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at the Cambridge Health Alliance. He is on the faculty and serves as a senior advisor and research consultant, currently co-developing an fMRI research protocol for treating chronic pain with self-compassion.
Chris spends his professional life traveling internationally, teaching and writing about mindfulness and self-compassion, supporting MSC teachers and students, consulting on self-compassion research, and maintaining a modest psychotherapy practice.