%0 Journal Article
%T Soothing Your Heart and Feeling Connected: A New Experimental Paradigm to Study the Benefits of Self
%A Anke Karl
%A Claire Brejcha
%A Hans Kirschner
%A Henrietta Roberts
%A Kim Wright
%A Willem Kuyken
%J Clinical Psychological Science
%@ 2167-7034
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/2167702618812438
%X Self-compassion and its cultivation in psychological interventions are associated with improved mental health and well-being. However, the underlying processes for this are not well understood. We randomly assigned 135 participants to study the effect of two short-term self-compassion exercises on self-reported-state mood and psychophysiological responses compared to three control conditions of negative (rumination), neutral, and positive (excitement) valence. Increased self-reported-state self-compassion, affiliative affect, and decreased self-criticism were found after both self-compassion exercises and the positive-excitement condition. However, a psychophysiological response pattern of reduced arousal (reduced heart rate and skin conductance) and increased parasympathetic activation (increased heart rate variability) were unique to the self-compassion conditions. This pattern is associated with effective emotion regulation in times of adversity. As predicted, rumination triggered the opposite pattern across self-report and physiological responses. Furthermore, we found partial evidence that physiological arousal reduction and parasympathetic activation precede the experience of feeling safe and connected
%K self-compassion
%K self-criticism
%K psychophysiology
%K positive affiliative affect
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167702618812438