| Self-compassion encourages self-acceptance and kindness during emotional suffering, and may reduce emotion regulation deficits in those with anxiety disorders (Barnard & Curry, 2011; Neff, 2003a). It is plausible that practicing self-compassion improves emotion regulation in generalized anxiety disorder. This randomized experimental study investigated whether a brief self-compassion intervention led to significant reductions in emotion regulation deficits in those with GAD as compared to a relaxation intervention, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR). Thirty-seven participants with GAD were recruited and randomly assigned to either (1) self-compassion condition or a (2) comparison condition, PMR. Participants were guided through a negative mood induction followed by either a self-compassion intervention or PMR. Emotion regulation and affective states were measured at baseline, post-mood induction, and post-intervention via self-report measures, computerized linguistic analysis (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., 2007), and trained coders. The self-compassion training group yielded significantly greater increases in positive expressivity than the relaxation-training group. Although neither the self-compassion training nor relaxation training interventions proved superior in reducing emotion dysregulation or negative expressivity, both interventions yielded comparable statistically significant reductions in these domains. Additionally, self-reported level of self-compassion was statistically significantly inversely linked to emotion dysregulation and GAD symptom severity. Overall, the results of this study are somewhat consistent with preliminary evidence that self-compassion likely plays an important role in emotion regulation for those with GAD (Roemer et al., 2009). |
