Kindness begins with yourself: The role of self‐compassion in adolescent body satisfaction and eating pathology

Abstract

Objective: A wealth of evidence indicates that self-compassion is linked with positive psychological outcomes; however, little is known about the process through which self-compassion exerts its effect. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the direct and indirect impact of self-compassion on body satisfaction and eating pathology in adolescents.Method: Two hundred and thirty-eight students were recruited from three local high schools (M age = 16.49, 43.7% boys). All participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), Hopkins Symptom Checklist (SCL-5), Body Areas Satisfaction Scale (BASS), and Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire -Adolescent Version (EDE-Q) at baseline. The SCL-5, BASS, and EDE-Q were completed 4 months later.Results: Self-compassion was positively associated with body satisfaction and negatively associated with psychological distress and eating pathology in boys and girls at both time points. Longitudinal conditional process analyses revealed that self-compassion predicted changes in body satisfaction and eating pathology through changes in psychological distress for girls only. Notably, self-compassion was higher in boys than in girls. Discussion:Results underscore how self-compassion may be an important factor to target in fostering a positive body image and preventing disordered eating in adolescents. K E Y W O R D Sadolescents, body satisfaction, eating pathology, psychological distress, self-compassion

Transdiagnostic vulnerability factors in eating disorders: A network analysis

“…The central features of the described network are in line with the transdiagnostic factors of Fairburn's model of ED (Fairburn et al, 2003), that is, perfectionism, low self‐esteem, mood intolerance and interpersonal difficulties. Moreover, the findings indicate that ED patients may benefit from treatments designed to enhance cognitive flexibility, combined with self‐compassion techniques (Pullmer, Coelho, & Zaitsoff, 2019; A. F. Wagner & Vitousek, 2019). For example, compassion focused therapy (Gilbert, 2009) learns patients to become milder to themselves instead of their extreme perfectionism, which provokes constant negative emotions and thus maintains the ED.…”

A longitudinal examination of body‐checking behaviors and eating disorder pathology in a community sample of adolescent males and females

“…A 3‐month follow‐up period was selected to match the time frame used to assess for diagnoses of bulimia nervosa (and historically in anorexia nervosa; American Psychological Association, 2013) as well as to be consistent with past literature (e.g., McCabe, Connaughton, Tatangelo, Mellor, & Busija, 2017; McMillan, Stice, & Rohde, 2011; Rohde et al, 2014; Shu et al, 2019; Wade, Byrne, & Allen, 2017). Adolescents who provided written informed consent completed a questionnaire package that assessed sociodemographic data as well as body checking and eating pathology at T1 and T2 (in addition to other measures included as part of two independent research questions on self‐compassion and body checking in patients with eating and obsessive–compulsive disorders; Coelho et al, 2019; Pullmer, Coelho, & Zaitsoff, 2019).…”

Beliren yetişkinlikte romantik ilişki doyumu

“…This finding was complementary with the growing body of literature that shows self-compassionate people have better personal and relational functioning. Selfcompassion is positively related with health and well-being (Biber & Ellis, 2019;Bluth & Blanton, 2014;Neff et al, 2008), body satisfaction (Pullmer et al, 2019), mindfulness (Svendsen et al, 2017), emotional intelligence (Castilho et al, 2017), and self-esteem (Neff & Vonk, 2009). However, selfcompassion was negatively associated with depression and rumination (Svendsen et al, 2017), social anxiety (Makadi & Koszycki, 2020), perceived stress (Bluth et al, 2017), vulnerable narcissism and aggression (Barry et al, 2015).…”