Not Only the Forest and Trees but Also the Ground They Are Rooted in: Identifying Profiles of Self-Compassion from the Perspective of Dialecticism

Taking the dialecticism of emotions (emotional typology) as theoretical basis, the present study investigated profiles of self-compassion considering response patterns on items of compassionate self-responding (self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness) and reduced uncompassionate self-responding (reduced self-judgement, isolation, and over-identification) and examined the differences in individuals’ psychological well-being across various self-compassion profiles.

A total of 358 Chinese college students were included in the study. They completed scales on self-compassion, positive aspects of psychological well-being (self-esteem, life satisfaction, and resilience), and negative aspects of psychological well-being (anger and depressive symptoms). Latent profile analysis was used to identify the profiles of self-compassion.

Four profiles of self-compassion were identified: nondialectical low self-compassion, nondialectical high self-compassion, dialectical moderate self-compassion, and dialectical high self-compassion. Participants in the high self-compassion profiles reported higher degrees of positive psychological well-being and lower degrees of negative psychological well-being than those in the other two profiles. Participants in the nondialectical high self-compassion profile reported higher levels of resilience and self-esteem and lower levels of depressive symptoms and anger than those in the dialectical high self-compassion profile. Participants in the dialectical high self-compassion profile reported higher levels of resilience, self-esteem, and life satisfaction and lower levels of depressive symptoms than those in the dialectical moderate self-compassion profile.

Findings suggest that Easterners have various emotion regulation patterns for coping with unpleasant experiences. In future interventions, practitioners could select the appropriate aspects of self-compassion for improvement with consideration of the clients’ self-compassion profile.