Self‐reassurance, not self‐esteem, serves as a buffer between self‐criticism and depressive symptoms

Abstract

Self-reassurance and self-criticism are distinct processes and they should not be considered positive and negative variations of a single dimension Different types of positive self-relating do not show the same correlation with depressive symptoms. The ability to be self-reassuring protects against the psychopathological correlates of self-criticism while having high self-esteem does not. Compassion-focused interventions are promising avenues to help clients counteract the negative impact of self-criticism on mood.

Neurophysiological and behavioural markers of compassion

“…Whilst important research into the neural and self-report bases of criticism have been conducted, however, research has yet to continue an understanding of factors which may dampen criticism's pathogenic effects, such as self-compassion and/or self-reassurance. Self-reassurance is the ability to be encouraging, resilient, and aware of one's positive qualities and capabilities in the face of setbacks, mistakes or failures 16 . Importantly, the ability for self-reassurance has been shown to protect against symptoms of psychopathology, such as depression and anxiety 16 , whereas self-criticism has been shown to predispose toward their development 17 .…”

“…Self-reassurance is the ability to be encouraging, resilient, and aware of one's positive qualities and capabilities in the face of setbacks, mistakes or failures 16 . Importantly, the ability for self-reassurance has been shown to protect against symptoms of psychopathology, such as depression and anxiety 16 , whereas self-criticism has been shown to predispose toward their development 17 . Within a Compassionate Mind Training (CMT) framework, self-reassurance is the cognitive relating style used when adopting a compassionate-mind 16 .…”

“…Importantly, the ability for self-reassurance has been shown to protect against symptoms of psychopathology, such as depression and anxiety 16 , whereas self-criticism has been shown to predispose toward their development 17 . Within a Compassionate Mind Training (CMT) framework, self-reassurance is the cognitive relating style used when adopting a compassionate-mind 16 . Compassion is defined as, "a sensitivity to suffering in self and others, with a commitment to try and alleviate and prevent it (p. 2) 18 ".…”

“…Compassion is defined as, "a sensitivity to suffering in self and others, with a commitment to try and alleviate and prevent it (p. 2) 18 ". Thus, if the motive of a behavior or cognitive relating style is to reduce suffering there are many ways one can do this, such as being kind to oneself, as well as being self-reassuring 16,18 .…”

Self-reassurance reduces neural and self-report reactivity to negative life events

“…Motivated to explore this timely and open question, we conducted an fMRI experiment which examined two distinct self-relating styles, self-criticism and selfreassurance 9 , when participants imagined themselves responding to mistakes, setbacks or failures. Importantly, we designed our experiment to deliberately tease apart neural markers of negative emotion, which we refer to as 'neural pain', first by manipulating an emotional -neutral contrast at the first level of fMRI analysis, and explored how this activation may differ across self-criticism and self-reassurance.…”