Abstract
Objectives
Self-compassion is a caring way of relating to personal distress that has known soothing physiological effects characterized by feelings of safeness. Individuals low in distress tolerance feel threatened by negative emotions and believe that they are unable to tolerate them. We tested the theory that for this population, experiencing negative emotions with self-compassion, as compared to without self-compassion, would allow individuals to feel safer and more soothed, thereby increasing their distress tolerance, our primary outcome.
Method
We tested this hypothesis in a randomized controlled trial involving Canadian undergraduate students (n = 150) and international community adults (n = 298) with below-average distress tolerance levels. In an online session, participants brought to mind a distressing situation and then completed one of three interventions: writing about their negative emotions (pure exposure); writing about their negative emotions from a compassionate perspective (self-compassionate exposure); writing about a neutral topic (placebo control).
Results
In both samples, self-compassionate exposure yielded higher self-reported post-intervention distress tolerance than pure exposure (d = 0.37–0.55, p < 0.05) but not compared to placebo control (d = 0.10–0.34, p > 0.05). The relative effect of self-compassionate exposure over pure exposure occurred indirectly via greater levels of self-reported soothing affect during the intervention (proportion mediated, 0.53–0.67). Between-condition differences were absent at 1-week follow-up.
Conclusions
Findings suggest that exposure to negative emotions with self-compassion, as compared to without, may be a more effective way to momentarily increase distress tolerance due to its effects on soothing affect.
Preregistration
US Clinical Trials Registry #NCT05284578
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Data Availability
Data can be made available upon request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express our gratitude to Giselle Kraus for her invaluable assistance in conducting this research project. The study is conducted in accordance with the 2010 CONSORT statement (Moher et al., 2010). The Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist is provided in Supplementary Materials Table S3.
Funding
This work draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Jenessa Shaw, Allison Kelly).
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Jenessa Shaw: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing – original draft. Allison Kelly: conceptualization, methodology, writing – review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Ethics approval was granted by a University of Waterloo Research Ethics Board (#42863).
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Shaw, J.L., Kelly, A.C. How Exposure to Personal Distress With and Without Self-compassion Affects Distress Tolerance: Results from a Two-Sample Randomized Trial. Mindfulness 15, 570–585 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-024-02312-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-024-02312-x