Dispositional self‐compassion and responses to mood challenge in people at risk for depressive relapse/recurrence

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between dispositional self‐compassion and cognitive emotion regulation capacities in individuals with a history of depression. Study 1 (n = 403) established that self‐compassion was associated with increased use of positive and decreased use of negative strategies, with small to medium sized correlations. Study 2 (n = 68) was an experimental study examining the association between dispositional self‐compassion, use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and changes in mood and self‐devaluation in participants exposed to a negative mood induction followed by mood repair (mindfulness, rumination, silence). Individuals with higher levels of dispositional self‐compassion showed greater mood recovery after mood induction, and less self‐devaluation across the experimental procedure, independent of their mood‐repair condition or habitual forms of cognitive emotion regulation. These results suggest that self‐compassion is associated with more adaptive responses to mood challenges in individuals with a history of recurrent depression.

Soothing Your Heart and Feeling Connected: A New Experimental Paradigm to Study the Benefits of Self-Compassion

“…Notably, our LKM-S condition differed from that used in previous research (Arch et al, 2014; Ashar et al, 2016; Fredrickson et al, 2008; Hutcherson et al, 2008; Kok et al, 2013; Weng et al, 2013) by inviting participants to direct compassion to a secure attachment figure/loved one first, and then to direct compassion to the self for several minutes. In support of a possible role of self-compassion for addressing cognitive vulnerability, we have recently shown that individuals with a history of recurrent depression who reported greater self-compassion showed lower self-devaluation and more efficient mood recovery from a sad mood induction (Karl, Williams, Cardy, Kuyken, & Crane, 2018). That the activation of the above physiological pattern partially preceded increased positive and reduced negative self indicates that a state of low physiological arousal (calm and content) in a nonthreatening and nondrive situation may enable openness for altered cognitive appraisals (Fredrickson et al, 2008), but this should be more directly investigated; for example, by using self-referential tasks (Markus, 1977).…”

Depression and sleep quality among Chinese college students: The roles of rumination and self-compassion

“…For example, over a five-month treatment in which self-compassion was present, the participants showed diminished levels of depressive symptoms (Odou and Brinker 2015;Raes 2011). Similarly, Karl et al (2018) suggested that self-compassion is associated with more adaptive responses to mood challenges in individuals with a history of depression. These findings indicated that self-compassion serves as a potentially important protective factor for depression (Wadsworth et al 2018).…”

A biobehavioural approach to understand how mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduces dispositional negative self-bias in recurrent depression

“…MBCT-related cultivation of self-compassion also facilitated effective recovery from experimentally induced negative mood in individuals with recurrent depression (Kuyken et al, 2010). Additionally, levels of dispositional self-compassion are associated with more adaptive emotion regulation and more effective repair of negative mood in individuals with current (Diedrich, Grant, Hofmann, Hiller, & Berking, 2014) and remitted depression (Karl, Williams, Cardy, Kuyken, & Crane, 2018). Hence, cultivating self-compassion could be a key mechanism of change via which MBCT is addressing negative self-bias.…”