Soothing Oneself and Resisting Self-Attacks: The Treatment of Two Intrapersonal Deficits in Depression Vulnerability

Abstract

Self-critical individuals are more likely to become and remain depressed (Blatt, Experiences of depression: Theoretical, research and clinical perspectives, American Psychological Association Press, Washington, DC, 2004). This vulnerability to depression may reflect the association of trait self-criticism with difficulties self-soothing and resisting self-attacks. The current study tested the impact of two self-help interventions designed to reduce depression by improving these two intrapersonal deficits. The first was designed to foster compassionate self-relating whereas the second was designed to foster resilient self-relating. Seventy-five distressed acne sufferers were assigned to one of three conditions: a self-soothing intervention, an attack-resisting intervention, or a control condition. The interventions consisted of daily imagery-based self-talk exercises inspired by Gilbert's (Genes on the couch: Explorations in evolutionary psychotherapy, Brenner-Routledge, Hove, 2000) social mentatlities theory and compassionate mind training (Gilbert and Irons, Compassion: Conceptualisations, research and use in psychotherapy, Brunner-Routledge, London, 2005). In two weeks, the self-soothing intervention lowered shame and skin complaints. The attack-resisting intervention lowered depression, shame, and skin complaints, and was especially effective at lowering depression for self-critics. Implications for the treatment of self-criticism and depression are discussed.

Personality, emotional intelligence and work preferences in software engineering: An empirical study

“…Each one of these three components has a negative respective value (Self-judgment, Isolation and Over-identification correspondingly). There is a growing number of researchers that link self-compassion to psychological health, while others, relate self-compassion with less anxiety and depression [27,62,63,64]. The Self-compassion questionnaire is comprised of 26 items, from which 6 subscale scores (previously reported) are computed by calculating the mean of subscale item responses.…”

Who Benefits from Training in Self-Compassionate Self-Regulation? A Study of Smoking Reduction

“…The intervention consisted of imagery-based self-talk exercises, similar to those used by Kelly et al (2009), which were designed to stimulate the soothingaffiliation system and to yield feelings of safeness and well-being. To ensure that the moderators that emerged for our self-compassion intervention could be interpreted as pertaining to self-compassion training in particular, and not imagery-based self-talk exercises in general, we developed two additional, novel imagery-based selftalk interventions and included them as enhanced control conditions.…”

“…Self-critics tend to be especially hostile in the way they relate to themselves and are impaired in their capacity for self-soothing and self-kindness (Kelly et al, 2009;Whelton & Greenberg, 2005). Self-compassion, however, can be seen as an antidote to self-criticism, and compassion-focused therapies aim to inhibit the shame and negative affect that self-attacking perpetuates among self-critical individuals (Gilbert, 2009;Kelly et al, 2009). Indeed, CMT was primarily developed to help individuals prone to shame and self-criticism.…”

“…Individuals high in this trait tend to criticize themselves for failing to attain their many goals and standards (Blatt et al, 1976) and show little capacity for selfreassurance (Gilbert, 2005;Kelly et al, 2009). Our self-compassion intervention encouraged participants to direct warmth and understanding toward themselves as they tried to resist urges to smoke.…”

“…Gilbert and Procter (2006) found that among a group of individuals with chronic mental health difficulties, 12 sessions of CMT reduced participants' depression, anxiety, self-criticism, and shame, and improved their capacity to be self-soothing. Among distressed acne sufferers, Kelly, Zuroff, and Shapira (2009) found that two weeks of daily exercises in which participants visualized a compassionate image and related to themselves from its perspective reduced shame and skin complaints more than a control condition. Preliminary research therefore supports the emotional benefits of engaging in exercises aimed at increasing self-compassion.…”