Self-Criticism and Self-Warmth: An Imagery Study Exploring Their Relation to Depression

Emotion Regulation Skills Training Enhances the Efficacy of Inpatient Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…Additionally, the enriched version of CBT appears to be significantly more effective with regard to enhancing patients' well-being and reducing negative affect. Moreover, we found evidence for the superiority of CBT-ERT with regard to strengthening ER skills considered particularly important for mental health, such as compassionate self-support, resilience, and abilities to accept and modify negative emotions [26,27,55,77,78,88,89,90]. Further, exploratory analyses indicated that neither pretreatment ER skills, sex, age, nor type of MDD diagnosis (single-episode vs. recurrent) moderated the effects of CBT-ERT.…”

“…With regard to content and procedures, the highly structured and manualized ART (in both the original and the slightly shortened version used in this study) synthesizes techniques from CBT [63], dialectical behavioral therapy [47], mindfulness-based interventions [66], self-compassion trainings [26], emotion-focused therapy [46], and problem-solving therapies [67] in order to systematically enhance general ER skills. The training begins with a thorough outline of the biological and psychological origins, functions, mechanisms, and possible risks and benefits of emotional reactions.…”

“…Based on help- and hopelessness theories of depression, it has been suggested that adaptive ER skills may deactivate depressogenic schemata by providing control over undesired emotions in situations that are difficult to control [19]. Preliminary empirical support for the assumed relevance of ER skills comes from cross-sectional studies demonstrating that individuals suffering from MDD report difficulties with identifying their emotions [20,21], accepting and tolerating negative emotions [22,23,24,25], compassionately supporting themselves when suffering from negative emotions [26,27], and effectively modifying their own emotions [28,29,30]. Moreover, it has been shown that symptoms of depression are positively associated with ruminating/brooding, catastrophizing and expressional suppression [31,32], which have been conceptualized as (ineffective) attempts to avoid negative emotions [33,34].…”

Thinness in the Pursuit for Social Safeness: An Integrative Model of Social Rank Mentality to Explain Eating Psychopathology

“…External and internal shame can be fused together, in a sense that experiencing that one is perceived negatively by others may fuel negative self-evaluations and a critical and hostile internal world. In this sense, shame is highly linked to self-criticism (Gilbert, 2000b;Gilbert, Baldwin, Irons, Baccus, & Palmer, 2006;Gilbert, Clarke, Hempel, Miles, & Irons, 2004;Gilbert & Irons, 2005;Gilbert & Miles, 2000;Pinto-Gouveia, Castilho, Matos, & Xavier, 2011).…”

“…Self-criticism may be understood as a maladaptive emotional regulation process that emerges to cope with shortcomings of the self as seen as inadequate or inferior (Gilbert & Irons, 2005;Gilbert et al, 2004) and that is highly linked to psychopathology (Blatt & Zuroff, 1992;Dunckley, Zuroff, & Blankstein, 2003;Gilbert, 2002;Gilbert et al, 2006;Gilbert et al, 2004). Overall, research has shown that the over-stimulation of a social rank mentality underlies a sense of inferiority and promotes shame and a critical selfevaluation (Gilbert, 2005a(Gilbert, , 2010, increasing the vulnerability to a wide range of emotional and psychopathological difficulties (Bellew, Gilbert, Mills, McEwan, & Gale, 2006;Gilbert, 1992Gilbert, , 2005aGilbert et al, 2007;Gilbert, McEwan, Bellow, Mills, & Gale, 2009).…”