Intervention(s)
exercises were selected and presented to participants in the following order:
Day 1: How would you treat a friend? (Gilbert 2010, p. 48; Neff 2017; Rockman and Hurley 2015, p. 5). This task was designed to evoke insight into different approaches people commonly use for treating friends and themselves during adversity and then help them to turn the more compassionate language, people usually have for their friends, towards themselves.
Day 2: Compassionate letter to myself (Gilbert 2010, p. 81; Neff 2017; Rockman and Hurley 2015, p. 22). This task involved writing about what you don’t like about yourself and how this makes you feel. The second part of the task was to imagine a compassionate friend and using their perspective, write about how this friend views your flaws.
Day 3: Letting go of a painful memory from your childhood (1st part). This task involved writing a letter from yourself as a child expressing your past pain (Halamová 2013, p. 69).
Day 4: Letting go of a painful memory from childhood (2nd part). This task involved writing a letter from one’s own perspective as an adult to themselves as a child and it was designed to enable one to express compassion and protective anger towards themselves as a child (Halamová 2013, p. 69)
Day 5: Letting go of a painful memory from childhood (3rd part). This task was to read the letter from the adult as they would do if they were a child again and to respond from the child’s perspective expressing their emotions and needs. The final exercise of this task was to respond to the child’s needs from the adult perspective (Halamová 2013, p. 69)
Day 6: Expressing protective anger (modified from Berg 2012, p. 19; Greenberg and Warwar 2006, p. 193–4; Halamová 2013, p. 57). This task involved recalling an event when someone was critical towards you or was shaming you and to imagine how your close friend would defend or protect you, then reformulate the same protective response from your perspective to the self. This task was designed to enable participants to express their protective anger.
Day 7: Expressing compassion towards the self (modified from Berg 2012, p. 21; Greenberg and Warwar 2006, p. 194; Halamová 2013, p. 59). This task involved recalling a self-critical event and imagining that this had happened to a vulnerable child. Participants were instructed to be compassionate towards the child and then turn the same compassionate response towards the self.
Day 8: Self-compassionate mirror. This task required participants to look in the mirror at the end of the day and be self-compassionate about pleasant or unpleasant events which may have occurred during the day followed by an expressive writing task to write about this experience. This task was designed to promote the experience of self-compassion (inspired by Petrocchi et al. 2017).
Day 9: Compassionate friend (Gilbert 2009; Rockman and Hurley 2015, p. 35). This task involved imagining that a compassionate friend is coming to visit you and when they arrive, they tell you all the things you need to hear at this moment in your life and they present you with a gift that has a special meaning for you.
Day 10: Self-compassion break (Neff 2017; Rockman and Hurley 2015, p. 7). This task involved recalling a stressful experience and putting your hand on your heart and saying to yourself that it is a moment of suffering, reason that other people suffer too and that you can still be kind to yourself. Participants are then instructed to write about their experience.
Day 11: Self-compassionate language (Rockman and Hurley 2015, p. 8). During this task participants were instructed to list their typical criticisms and reframe them into compassionate words towards themselves.
Day 12: Self-compassion in daily life (Germer 2016). This task involved searching for new ways to be more self-compassionate on a physical, emotional, rational, social, and spiritual level and writing about these new approaches.
Day 13: Self-compassion in everyday life. During day 14, participants were instructed to practice the new self-compassionate ways they identified on day 13 and write about their experience of using these new approaches in the evening.
Day 14: Thanksgiving. The final task involved making a list of as many things as possible that you are grateful for in your life (this task is similar to the Appreciation exercise by Gilbert 2010 and Appreciating Yourself by Germer and Neff 2013 and Rockman and Hurley 2015)