According to new research, self-compassion may help people use more effective coping strategies and in turn feel better.
While we may have heard that it’s important to treat ourselves with kindness, sometimes this is easier said than done, especially when we’re under stress. When we’re facing challenging circumstances, we may fall back into less productive thought patterns, like ruminating or blaming ourselves. We may even worry that we’re going too easy on ourselves or being selfish if we practice self-kindness.
However, new research is finding that these worries seem to be misplaced: It turns out that practicing self-compassion in stressful times may help us tackle problems more effectively.
Self-compassion in stressful times
Researchers suggest that self-compassion has three main components. The first involves self-kindness; that is, treating ourselves with the same kind of understanding and compassion that we might extend to a close friend. The second involves mindfulness, or being aware of what we are feeling, without letting our emotions overwhelm us. The third involves a sense of common humanity; in other words, seeing how our stressors are part of the shared human experience.
In the current study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Happiness Studies, researchers asked participants (including both college students and community members from Germany) to complete surveys during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, three times over six weeks in spring and summer 2020. In the surveys, participants reported on their self-compassion, their well-being, and how they coped with stress. In total, 430 participants filled out the first survey, and 264 participants completed the last survey.
To measure how they coped with stress, people were asked to indicate how much they typically used different coping styles. Some of these coping styles consisted of what researchers call “functional” coping, such as taking steps to deal with the problem or seeking out support from others. Others consisted of strategies considered dysfunctional coping, such as denying or disengaging from the problem, or engaging in substance use as a means of distraction. In addition, the researchers also asked participants to fill out surveys of their life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.
The researchers found that people who reported greater self-compassion initially used healthier coping strategies at the time of the second survey, compared to people who were less self-compassionate. In addition to engaging in more functional coping, more self-compassionate people were less likely to cope with stress with less productive strategies, such as denying the reality of the situation, blaming themselves, shutting down, or turning to drugs or alcohol. In turn, they seemed to be doing better at the end of the study: They felt greater positive emotions and less stress and negative emotions.
In fact, the coping styles of more self-compassionate people seemed to help explain why they were in a better headspace at the end of the study, at least partially. The fact that self-compassionate people engaged in dysfunctional coping less often helped account for their lower stress and negative emotions.
This finding is especially interesting because many people who are hesitant to treat themselves with kindness may worry that doing so could cause them to become complacent about a situation, or fall into self-pity. However, the current study suggests that, if anything, the opposite seems to be true: People higher in self-compassion tend to be more likely to cope with problems in healthy ways. Instead of falling into dysfunctional coping strategies, the researchers suggest that “self-compassion facilitates an accepting and balanced attitude toward challenges.”
This research also dovetails with a previous study, which analyzed the results of 130 studies (with over 38,000 participants) and found that more self-compassionate people tended to report more healthy coping and less unhealthy coping (although in that case, there was less evidence of which caused which). This study also builds on prior research finding that writing about a stressful event in a self-compassionate way improved people’s mood (compared to just expressing their emotions). Additionally, it’s been suggested that self-compassion may be especially helpful if it breaks the cycle of rumination—that is, thinking over and over again about stressful events in an unhelpful way.
In other words, treating ourselves with compassion doesn’t mean ignoring the reality of stressful events. Instead, when we take a moment to show ourselves kindness, we may actually be setting ourselves up to approach stressors in a healthier and more productive way.
This article was published on Greater Good. Content may be edited for style and length.
