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Parental emotional warmth, self-compassion and some typical transdiagnostic symptoms

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2017

Abstract

CONTEXT: Parental emotional warmth in childhood use to be linked to the subsequent development of self-compassion. Lack of parental emotional warmth on the contrary may be related to later occurrence of some typical transdiagnostic symptoms such as shyness, internalized shame or difficulties in emotion regulation.

METHOD: By means of three questionnaire surveys an attempt has been made to verify the theoretically anticipated connections between parental emotional warmth in childhood (as measured by PBI, EMWSS and s-EMBU), self-compassion (SCS-CZ), shyness (RCBS), internalized shame (ISS) and difficulties in emotional regulation (DERS-SF-CZ). RESULTS: Surveys 1, 2, and 3 showed moderate correlations between parental emotional warmth and self-compassion (N1=263; PBI, r=0,3; N2=305, EMWSS, r=0,4; N3=440; s-EMBU, r=0,3; p123 < 0,01).

Surveys 1, 2, and 3 further showed the following correlations between self-compassion and 1) shyness (r=-0,44, p < 0,01), 2) internalized shame (r=-0,79, p < 0,01) and 3) difficulties in emotional regulation (r=-0,72, p < 0,01). CONCLUSIONS: Three independent surveys confirmed the link between parental emotional warmth in childhood and self-compassion in adulthood.

The surveys further demonstrated that self-compassion probably significantly eliminates some typical transdiagnostic symptoms, namely, shyness, internalized shame and difficulties in emotion regulation.