A comparison of reappraisal and self-compassion as an emotion regulation strategy in the context of maltreatment.

Objective: Maltreatment is a significant contributor of emotion dysregulation. Self-compassion could be an effective novel emotion regulation strategy for maltreatment. We compare self-compassion and other strategies with and without the context of maltreatment.

Methods: We recruited a cross-sectional sample of 188 adult participants using Mechanical Turk (21-69 years), with and without childhood maltreatment exposure, to complete an emotion regulation task comparing reappraisal, self-compassion, and a non-instruction condition for positive and negative emotions. We examined the impact of valence and strategy on self-reported emotional intensity in response to each image, and analyzed the interaction of maltreatment exposure and severity with valence and regulation strategy.

Findings: Without factoring in maltreatment, we observed significant differences between reappraisal and self-compassion (F(1,14,117.1) = 5.716, p < 0.001) in response to emotional images. When using self-compassion, negative images evoked less intense negative emotions, and more extreme positive emotions compared to reappraisal. We also detected a significant interaction of valence, strategy, and maltreatment severity (F(2,16,818.2) = 4.24, p = 0.014). We observed differences in emotional responses for those with high levels and low levels of maltreatment severity between strategies. Self-compassion use resulted in the most consistent emotional ratings across all severity levels for negative image trials, while reappraisal and non-instructed trials minimized emotional responses as severity increased. In response to positive images, reappraisal was most effective at minimizing emotions at low levels of maltreatment severity and performed similarly to self-compassion at higher levels of severity.

Conclusion: The current study provides early evidence that self-compassion performs effectively as an emotion regulation strategy. It performed similarly, or superior, to reappraisal in the context of maltreatment and was consistently effective across both maltreatment and abuse severity in a cross-sectional sample. We observed more extreme positive affect in those who experienced maltreatment. However, these strategies performed similarly when we did not include maltreatment, indicating similar general effectiveness. These findings have potential implications for further research regarding emotion regulation strategies and for clinical interventions as a function of maltreatment.