Self-compassion among psychotherapy clients is in the details of negative, not positive, emotions

Self-compassion involves the capacity to accept one’s negative emotional experiences with kindness and mindful awareness, acknowledging them as part of the human condition. The present work is premised on the idea that self-compassion may be tied to the degree to which individuals are able to distinguish among their negative emotional states. We hypothesized that psychotherapy clients high in self-compassion will be better at distinguishing among their negative (but not positive) emotional states. Clients (N = 136) from a community clinic completed the Self Compassion Scale pre-and post-treatment. Clients’ self-compassion levels as well as their emotional states were monitored before and after each psychotherapy session, respectively. Negative emotion differentiation was associated with both treatment and session level self-compassion; in contrast, positive emotion differentiation was not correlated with self-compassion levels. The implications of the findings will be discussed in light of contemporary accounts of self-compassion, affect dynamics, and affect regulation.