Self-Compassion: Conceptualizations, Correlates, & Interventions

Abstract

Within American psychology, there has been a recent surge of interest in self-compassion, a construct from Buddhist thought. Self-compassion entails: (a) being kind and understanding toward oneself in times of pain or failure, (b) perceiving one's own suffering as part of a larger human experience, and (c) holding painful feelings and thoughts in mindful awareness. In this article we review findings from personality, social, and clinical psychology related to self-compassion. First, we define self-compassion and distinguish it from other self-constructs such as self-esteem, self-pity, and self-criticism. Next, we review empirical work on the correlates of self-compassion, demonstrating that self-compassion has consistently been found to be related to well-being. These findings support the call for interventions that can raise self-compassion. We then review the theory and empirical support behind current interventions that could enhance self-compassion including compassionate mind training (CMT), imagery work, the gestalt two-chair technique, mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Directions for future research are also discussed.

Grief rumination mediates the association between self-compassion and psychopathology in relatives of missing persons

“…the ability to tolerate unpleasant emotion; Diedrich, Burger, Kirchner, & Berking, 2016). Of course, many other factors may potentially be involved in the association between self-compassion and post-loss psychopathology (see for an overview Barnard & Curry, 2011). Following previous studies (see Krieger et al, 2013; Raes, 2010) we examined the mediating role of rumination in the association between self-compassion and psychopathology levels.…”

The Effectiveness of a Pilot Self-Compassion Program on Well Being Components

“…Mindfulness is about the uncritical attitude towards the thoughts, feelings and actions of a person. As Armstrong (as cited in Germer, 2009) There is a proliferation of research over the past decade highlighting the association of self-compassion with psychological well being (Barnard & Curry, 2011;Neff, 2009) and functioning (Birnie, Speca, & Carlson, 2010;Neff, Kirkpatrick, & Rude, 2007). There is strong evidence that self-compassion constitutes a predicting factor of psychological well being and promoting mental health (Neff, 2004;Smeets et al, 2014).…”

“…Similarly, self compassion seems to be related to lower levels of negative mind-states, such as anxiety and depression (Barnard & Curry, 2011;Yang, 2016), stress, rumination, thought suppression, perfectionism and shame (Macbeth & Gumley, 2012;Neff & Lamb, 2009). These results strongly indicate the relationship between psychopathology and low levels of self compassion.…”

A Prospective Examination of Self-Compassion as a Predictor of Depressive Symptoms in Children and Adolescents

“…Cross-sectional research conducted with adults suggests that the association between self-compassion and depressive symptoms is robust (see MacBeth &Gumley, 2012, andBarnard &Curry, 2011, for reviews), but only two published studies have provid-ed longitudinal examinations of the effect of self-compassion on depressive symptoms. Specifically, Raes (2011) assessed whether change in depressive symptoms varied as a function of baseline levels of self-compassion over a 5-month interval in a collegeaged sample.…”

“…Despite the intuitive appeal of extending adult theories of depression to children and adolescents, age-related differences in cognition, emotion, and behavior must be taken into account when examining their applicability to younger populations (Digdon & Gotlib, 1985;Garber, 2000). Moreover, the vast majority of research conducted on self-compassion has been cross-sectional (Barnard & Curry, 2011), limiting insight into causal mechanisms.…”