Fears of compassion: development of three self-report measures.

By Paul Gilbert, Kirsten McEwan, M. Matos, A. Rivis. Psychology and psychotherapy, 2011

840 citations recorded by the source corpus.

OBJECTIVES There is increasing evidence that helping people develop compassion for themselves and others has powerful impacts on negative affect and promotes positive affect. However, clinical observations suggest that some individuals, particularly those high in self-criticism, can find self-compassion and receiving compassion difficult and can be fearful of it. This study therefore developed measures of fear of: compassion for others, compassion from others, and compassion for self. We also explored the relationship of these fears with established compassion for self and compassion for others measures, self-criticism, attachment styles, and depression, anxiety, and stress. METHOD Students (N= 222) and therapists (N= 53) completed measures of fears of compassion, self-compassion, compassion for others, self-criticism, adult attachment, and psychopathology. RESULTS Fear of compassion for self was linked to fear of compassion from others, and both were associated with self-coldness, self-criticism, insecure attachment, and depression, anxiety, and stress. In a multiple regression, self-criticism was the only significant predictor of depression. CONCLUSION This study suggests the importance of exploring how and why some people may actively resist engaging in compassionate experiences or behaviours and be fearful of affiliative emotions in general. This has important implications for therapeutic interventions and the therapeutic relationship because affiliative emotions are major regulators of threat-based emotions.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cae702ec5539392473d21cfb4a84c832b219f8e5

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Citations in the corpus

Non-suicidal Self-Injury in Adolescence: The Role of Shame, Self-Criticism and Fear of Self-Compassion (2016, background): “…adult populations demonstrated that fears of compassion (especially compassion from others and for self) were associated with selfcriticism, depression, anxiety and stress symptoms, alexithymia and difficulties with safeness and self-reassuring feelings (Gilbert et al. 2010b; Gilbert et al. 2012).”
Enhancing Compassion: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Compassion Cultivation Training Program (2013, background): “…investigations of compassion have focused on three specific orientations of compassion, namely, having compassion for others, receiving compassion from others or being the object of compassion, and compassion for oneself or self-compassion (Gilbert 2009; Gilbert et al. 2010; Neff 2003a, b).”
Self-Compassion and Psychological Well-being (2017, background): “In fact, research suggests that some people actually fear having self-compassion because they think it will undermine their efforts to reach their goals (Gilbert et al., 2011).”
Exploring compassion: a meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology. (2012, methodology): “Research suggests that inclusion of positive and negative components of compassion would be beneficial in identifying the " active " components of selfcompassion (van Dam et al., 2011; Gilbert et al, 2011).”
The forest and the trees: Examining the association of self-compassion and its positive and negative components with psychological functioning (2018, neutral): “Note that some researchers have used the terms self-criticism or self-coldness to describe the three components of self-compassion representing reduced negative self-responding (Costa, Marôco, Pinto-Gouveia, Ferreira, & Castilho, 2015; Gilbert et al., 2011; López et al., 2015).”
A randomized controlled trial of compassion cultivation training: Effects on mindfulness, affect, and emotion regulation (2013, positive): “For some individuals, extending compassion to others can generate fear (Gilbert et al. 2010), perhaps due to a fear of diminishing one’s own personal resources.”
The development of compassionate engagement and action scales for self and others (2017, background): “Gilbert et al. [51] also found that fears of receiving compassion were strongly associated with fears and resistances to being self-compassionate, but much less so to being compassionate to others.”
Self-compassion and Eudaimonic Well-Being During Emotionally Difficult Times in Sport (2015, background): “The Fear of Compassion for Self scale (Gilbert et al. 2011) is a 15-item, five-point scale ranging from 0 (don’t agree at all) to 4 (completely agree).”
The origins and nature of compassion focused therapy. (2014, background): “Importantly, there are a number of clients who can have difﬁculties with feelings of contentment, safeness and compassion (Gilbert, McEwan, Matos, & Rivis, 2011).”
Self-compassion and Posttraumatic Growth: Cognitive Processes as Mediators (2017, background): “…self-compassion tends to have stronger association with positive mental health outcomes while negative self-compassion tends to have stronger association with psychopathologies and negative mental health outcomes (Costa et al. 2015; Gilbert et al. 2011; López et al. 2015; Muris and Petrocchi 2016).”
Buddhist-Derived Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation for the Treatment of Psychopathology: a Systematic Review (2015, background): “CCT participants demonstrated significant improvements over control group participants in fear of compassion (Fears of Compassion Scales, Gilbert et al. 2010) and self-compassion (Self-Compassion Scale, Neff 2003).”