The Examination of a Two-Week Online Self-Led Self-Compassion training to Increase Self-Compassion.

• In Event: Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Topic - Prevention and Interventions

Abstract

The purpose of the proposed research is to study self-compassion, personal wellbeing, and trauma. We are using a two-week intervention that has been adapted from existing emotional expression, self-compassion and journaling techniques. Through our proposed study we will evaluate whether the two-week intervention has an influence on our participants levels of self-compassion and if there is a significant difference between the pre-intervention levels and post intervention levels of self-compassion.

Self-compassion has been defined by Neff (2003) as being comprised of three core areas - self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness. Numerous studies have pointed out the benefits of self-compassion research. Research has indicated that self-compassion is positively correlated with both improved mental health and greater happiness, while also fighting against anxiety, depression and fear of failure (Kreiger et al, 2013; Neff, 2003, 2007, 2010). As a result, there have been many interventions created to improve self-compassion. These interventions while effective take many weeks and require face to face sessions which can be hard for many patients to commit to (Ferrari et al, 2019; Neff et al, 2007). The present study would like to explore if a self-led two-week intervention online can teach the skill of self-compassion effectively. The benefits, if successful, are that this would further our reach to populations that do not have access to health care and mental health counseling and potentially help their psychological wellbeing.

The proposed study will use the techniques studied in self-compassion interventions and combine them with research on expressive writing. Expressive writing has been studied in treatment for posttraumatic stress conditions and comorbid depressive symptoms where it has resulted in significant short-term reductions of symptomology (Vinke, 2019). Originally writing allowed individuals to confront frustrating topics and removed inhibitions associated with not talking about the events. In comparison to many psychological interventions that are time-consuming and expensive, the effects of written emotional expression have been seen to be substantial and similar in magnitude while requiring less time and cost (Smyth, 1998).

We propose that with the two-week intervention we will be able to see an increase in self-compassion. The experimental group will be assigned a daily self-led self-compassion writing tasks and the control group will be assigned a daily non descriptive journaling task. We will be conducting anovas to look for individual change in self-compassion scores and to compare our two groups for differences in change over the two weeks. Individual difference measures will be looked at to see if there are potential covariates. Based on previous feasibility research we anticipate seeing a significant difference in the increase of self-compassion for our experimental group compared to our control group (Kelly, 2018).

Authors

• Tyler Forest Moore, University of Arkansas
  Presenting Author

• Tionna Marylee Hough, Tarleton State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Heather A. Labansat, Tarleton State University
  Non-Presenting Author