Understanding Self-Compassion within Narrative Identity: The Struggles of Japanese Students with Measuring Up

要旨

The psychology of self-compassion is growing in importance for understanding well-being and helping people in therapeutic and educational settings. However, present research may be limited by a narrow focus on nomothetic self-reports like the Self-Compassion Scale. This article supplements that qualitatively, looking at self-compassion in life stories. It is guided by the questions, “How do students experience the struggle between self-compassion and its deficit? And how is this experience manifest in their narrative identity?” This study examined three Japanese university students who submitted their narrative self-reflections, including stories of the high point, low point, turning point, and recurring pattern in their lives, without any direct prompting about “self-compassion.” However, their life stories spontaneously pointed to self-compassion and its deficit. These stories were analyzed using the methods of narrative analysis presented by Murray and Josselson, beginning with descriptive/inductive approaches then proceeding to a more interpretative phase using McAdams’ psychology of narrative identity. As expected, their stories included their struggles with self-criticism and self-isolation in what they do and how they think and feel about it. But beyond that, the paper points to entire personas in their stories and their self-conception revealing this struggle with low self-compassion. This shows that self-compassion can be seen on the level of narrative identity via life stories.

主題