Evolving Conceptualizations: A Commentary on the Varying Perspectives of Self-Compassion in Western Psychology

Abstract

Self-compassion involves being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, coupled with the desire to alleviate it and heal oneself with kindness. While self-compassion has gained significant attention in research, certain conceptual and methodological complexities have evolved over time and led to ambiguity surrounding the concept. As such, the overall purpose of this commentary was to highlight and discuss the different perspectives of self-compassion in the literature. We opted to centralize our focus primarily on Neff’s [1] self-compassion framework, given its extensive adoption. We highlight two broad perspectives for conceptualizing self-compassion in the literature: 1) Mind-Body Experiences (i.e., cognitive process, emotion/affect, or motivation) and 2) Generality (i.e., state-like, trait-like/global, or context-specific). This paper aims to offer insights into the complexities surrounding the conceptualizations of self-compassion and facilitate improvements in researchers approaches to studying this important construct.