An 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion group was delivered to 26 male veterans with moral injury, PTSD, and substance use disorder. Recruitment was easy and dropout was low (30.8%). Participants reported satisfaction. Clinically meaningful improvements were observed: self-compassion increased, while PTSD symptoms, guilt, shame, and number of drinking days decreased. The open-label design and small sample prevent conclusions about efficacy, but results suggest further study is warranted.
A brief self-compassion training (eight contact hours plus two weeks of home practice) reduced clinical pain intensity and disability and increased trait self-compassion and interoceptive awareness in people with chronic low back pain. Brain imaging showed that after training, evoked pressure pain response decreased in the right temporo-parietal junction, and pain anticipation responses increased in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventral posterior cingulate cortex. These brain changes were associated with improvements in self-compassion and body awareness. The authors argue that self-compassion may help regulate pain through self-referential, salience-processing, and emotion regulatory brain areas, but note that controlled studies are needed to confirm specificity.