Laurea, Sapienza University of Rome, 2005
Specialization in Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy at School of Cognitive Psychotherapy (APC-SPC), Rome, 2012
Ph.D., Sapienza University of Rome, 2015
Nicola Petrocchi, Ph.D., Psy. D., is a licensed CBT psychotherapist based in Rome and, starting in 2025, Associate Professor of Psychology at John Cabot University, where she has been teaching since 2015.
During her international Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Neuroscience, she spent one year as a visiting scholar at Boston University in the lab of Prof. Stefan Hofmann, conducting research on the effects of Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) on dysthymic patients. She then completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Neuroimaging Laboratory, Fondazione Santa Lucia (Rome). Prof. Petrocchi has also served as Director of the Psycho-social Center for Immigrants and Refugees at the Identification Centre in Rome and as Clinical Advisor for several psycho-social services of Cooperativa Sociale AUXILIUM. After more than 12 years of direct training and supervision with Prof. Paul Gilbert, she is now an accredited Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) therapist and trainer in Italy and across Europe. She is the Founder and Director of Compassionate Mind Italia, the Italian association dedicated to the research, training, and dissemination of CFT. She translated into Italian and edited Paul Gilbert’s Compassion Focused Therapy: Distinctive Features (Franco Angeli).
Her research focuses on the psychophysiology of compassion and the physiological correlates of prosocial motivations, exploring how activating compassion toward ourselves and others can help overcome pathological self-criticism and improve psychophysiological wellbeing. She is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters (Google Scholar profile) and has recently published with Routledge the clinical manual Essentials of Compassion Focused Therapy: A Practice Manual for Clinicians, which is currently being translated into Italian for publication by Erikson.
