“Dear past me, know that you are deserving of compassion and care”: Self-compassionate writings of adolescent girls recalling weight-stigmatizing events in physical activity.

Abstract

Adolescent girls often face weight-stigmatizing experiences in physical activity contexts. Self-compassion inductions may be useful in mitigating the harmful psychological consequences of these events. Self-compassionate writing inductions are easy to administer, cost-effective, and have demonstrated effectiveness in acutely increasing selfcompassion scores in adolescents. However, it is unclear how adolescent girls apply the components of self-compassion to manage difficult emotions (e.g., shame) that arise from recalling weight-stigmatizing events, and if these applications align with theoretical conceptualizations of self-compassion. The present qualitative study examined the written entries of a self-compassionate writing task completed by adolescent girls (n = 101) in response to a recalled negative weight-related experience that occurred in the context of physical activity. Using deductive content analysis, the written entries were compared against a coding structure that was informed by theoretical conceptualizations of self-compassion (e.g., self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness). On average, 72% of written entries were in alignment with conceptual tenets of self-kindness, 75% with common humanity, and 72% with mindfulness. Common challenges with applying self-compassion included demonstrating care toward the self in response to distress, empathizing with the experience of others, and overidentification. It is possible that challenges with applying self-compassion are exacerbated by culturally endorsed beliefs surrounding weight, particularly as related to physical activity. These findings can inform the development and optimization of future self-directed self-compassion inductions for adolescents in response to weight-stigmatizing events and may have utility in broader applications of self-compassionate writing interventions.

Brief self-compassion induction for adolescent girls’ weight-stigmatizing experiences in physical activity.

“…A sensitivity analysis was also performed for each of the dependent variables which compared participants assigned to the attentional control writing condition and only participants assigned to the self-compassion writing condition who were coded to have applied self-compassion correctly according to Neff’s (2003) three tenets of self-compassion. A qualitative analysis of the self-compassion writing tasks is published elsewhere (Bailey et al, 2022) which contains detailed information on how the self-compassion writing excerpts were coded. Of the n = 98 participants assigned to the self-compassion writing condition, n = 75 were judged to apply self-compassion correctly.…”

“…Participants were not provided with a time frame for when the experience needed to occur and were instructed to spend 5-10 min on this task. Detailed instructions of the first writing task have been published elsewhere (Bailey et al, 2022).…”

“…The instructions for these tasks were based on the prior literature implementing self-compassion writing interventions (e.g., Leary et al, 2007; Seekis et al, 2017). The full instructions for the writing tasks are published in a separate study which qualitatively investigated whether adolescent girls applied self-compassion in alignment with the writing tasks (Bailey et al, 2022).…”

“…Participants were judged to apply self-compassion correctly if they met criteria in the three writing tasks that aligned with pragmatic instructions for the task (e.g., writing a minimum of three sentences) and with theoretical conceptualizations of self-kindness (e.g., demonstrates care toward the self in response to distress), common humanity (e.g., believes their feelings are shared by others), and mindfulness (e.g., validates feelings and/or negative emotions). A detailed description of the coding strategy has been published elsewhere as part of a separate study which had the primary aim of qualitatively investigating whether adolescent girls apply the components of self-compassion correctly in self-compassion writing tasks (Bailey et al, 2022).…”

Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence: The Role of Motivation for Physical Activity, Self-Esteem, Implicit and Explicit Attitudes toward Obesity and Physical Activity

“…Moreover, weight bias is one of the latest acceptable forms of prejudice as the overweight individuals are considered to bear responsibility for the stigma they experience and because of the perception that stigma itself may motivate people to lose weight [14,15,17]. Therefore, obese children and adolescents who experience difficulties in a range of interpersonal contexts (e.g., teasing, social rejection, bullying) are likely to experience a decline in social status, and perceive themselves to be targets of prejudice and discrimination [3,7,18], which in turn negatively impacts their self-concept [12,[19][20][21]. This would explain why obese children and adolescents consistently report experiencing lowered life satisfaction and self-esteem.…”