Look Back in Kindness: Self-Compassion-Based Exercise Resulted in Fewer Harmful Cognitions Associated with Difficult Life Events

We experimentally investigated the impacts of a brief self-compassion exercise on adaptive and maladaptive means of coping with unresolved events. For unresolved events regarded as highly central to identity and life story, the self-compassion writing exercise (vs. control task) resulted in significantly lower ratings of harmful thought patterns.