TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2012//
TI  - When Leaving Your Ex, Love Yourself: Observational Ratings of Self-Compassion Predict the Course of Emotional Recovery Following Marital Separation
JO  - Psychological science
A1  - Sbarra, David A.
A1  - Smith, Hillary L.
A1  - Mehl, Matthias R.
SP  - 261
EP  - 269
VL  - 23
IS  - 3
N2  - Divorce is a highly stressful event, and much remains to be learned about the factors that promote psychological resilience when marriages come to an end. In this study, divorcing adults (N = 109) completed a 4-min stream-of-consciousness recording about their marital separation at an initial laboratory visit. Four judges rated the degree to which participants exhibited self-compassion (defined by self-kindness, an awareness of one's place in shared humanity, and emotional equanimity) in their recordings. Judges evidenced considerable agreement in their ratings of participants' self-compassion, and these ratings demonstrated strong predictive utility: Higher levels of self-compassion at the initial visit were associated with less divorce-related emotional intrusion into daily life at the start of the study, and this effect persisted up to 9 months later. These effects held when we accounted for a number of competing predictors. Self-compassion is a modifiable variable, and if our findings can be replicated, they may have implications for improving the lives of divorcing adults.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0956-7976
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611429466
ID  - ref1
ER  -