Within-Person Relationships Among Self-Compassion, Emotion Regulation Difficulties, and Anxiety Symptoms: Testing an Emotion Regulation Model of Self-Compassion

Anxiety symptoms is prevalent among college students and is associated with a range of detrimental consequences. Self-compassion and emotion regulation difficulties are important factors affecting anxiety symptoms, but their functional mechanism and longitudinal correlation are still unclear. This three-year longitudinal study (baseline: n = 5785, 48.2% of female, M_age = 18.63 years, SD = 0.88; T₁ to T₅: n = range from 4312 to 5497) aimed to validate the emotion regulation model of self-compassion by examining the associations between self-compassion, emotion regulation difficulties, and anxiety symptoms. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) was used to distinguish within-person variations overtime from stable between-person differences. The results obtained from the RI-CLPMs indicated that there is a bidirectional effect between self-compassion and anxiety symptoms at the within-person level. Emotional regulation difficulties played a longitudinal mediating role in the prediction from self-compassion to anxiety symptoms at the within-person level, validating the emotion regulation model of self-compassion. The current study indicates that cultivating self-compassion in college students is crucial as it can improve their emotion regulation skills and alleviate anxiety symptoms.