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<p>Autistic adults experience greater rates of anxiety and depression compared to the general population. Compassion-focused therapy interventions, aimed at promoting self-compassion capabilities, have shown efficacy in improving mental health outcomes in autistic and non-autistic samples suffering from self-criticism that contribute to difficulties in emotion regulation. We explored the experiences of autistic adults during a brief one-week online self-compassion exercise to evaluate it’s feasibility and acceptability through self-report, experience sampling, and parasympathetic activity measured via HRV. Pre- to post-intervention comparisons showed significant improvement in trait self-compassion and fears of self-compassion, but this did not extend to acute measures of psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and stress) nor difficulties in emotion regulation. HRV measures displayed significant increases during self-compassionate practice, although there were no significant changes in physiological reactivity pre- to post-intervention. Experience sampling measures found that whether participants acted on opportunities to be self-compassionate was predictive of concurrent evaluations of affective system activation, whereby acting self-compassionately was associated with greater reported activation of the soothing affective system. Together, our findings support the use of multimodal approaches to investigating the accessibility and efficacy of compassion-focused approaches to resolving emotional difficulties experienced by autistic adults.</p>

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Examining the Impact of a Brief Compassion Focused Intervention on Everyday Experiences of Compassion in Autistic Adults Through Psychophysiology and Experience Sampling

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年1月3日

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  • Chase S. Sherwell,
  • Deanna Varley,
  • Claudia Kinnane,
  • Wesley Turner,
  • David Zimmerman,
  • James N. Kirby

摘要

Autistic adults experience greater rates of anxiety and depression compared to the general population. Compassion-focused therapy interventions, aimed at promoting self-compassion capabilities, have shown efficacy in improving mental health outcomes in autistic and non-autistic samples suffering from self-criticism that contribute to difficulties in emotion regulation. We explored the experiences of autistic adults during a brief one-week online self-compassion exercise to evaluate it’s feasibility and acceptability through self-report, experience sampling, and parasympathetic activity measured via HRV. Pre- to post-intervention comparisons showed significant improvement in trait self-compassion and fears of self-compassion, but this did not extend to acute measures of psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and stress) nor difficulties in emotion regulation. HRV measures displayed significant increases during self-compassionate practice, although there were no significant changes in physiological reactivity pre- to post-intervention. Experience sampling measures found that whether participants acted on opportunities to be self-compassionate was predictive of concurrent evaluations of affective system activation, whereby acting self-compassionately was associated with greater reported activation of the soothing affective system. Together, our findings support the use of multimodal approaches to investigating the accessibility and efficacy of compassion-focused approaches to resolving emotional difficulties experienced by autistic adults.