Healing the self: The role of self-compassion and empathy in a mindfulness based modality for women survivors of interpersonal violence

The intent of this research was to study the role of self-compassion and empathy for healing the sense of 'self' with women who survive interpersonal violence. The study started with the theoretical premise for the connection and importance of empathy and self-compassion in how we come to understand the 'self; then established the positive correlation between self-compassion and empathy using two psychometric scales, The Self Compassion Scale (SCS) (Neff, 2003) and the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES) (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972) with a population of university students. From there it evolved into a mixed-methods exploration of the effectiveness of two different modalities, one feminist-based and one mindfulness-based, for increasing empathy and self-compassion. The quantitative research showed that both modalities significantly increased the women's mean scores in both self-compassion and empathy, showing the positive healing effects of both modalities. When more layers were examined, data showed differences in the subscale scores of the Self Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003) that suggested a different kind of change was present, one modality compared to another. The qualitative data, analyzed using Doucet & Mauthner's (2008) Listening Guide, suggested that each modality had great strengths and ameliorating effects for the participants. The feminist-based group seemed to be better at facilitating story telling, breaking women's sense of isolation, reifying their experience for them and at the same time challenging internalized oppression and raising their political consciousness. The mindfulness-based group helped women learn affect regulation skills, and arguably also gave them skill for attending and responding to others with 'true' empathy, that is not losing the 'as if' quality of sharing another's emotions. Theoretically then, this self-in-relationship becomes the interior working model of the securely attached 'self' capable of empathic, and therefore ethical, agency. The implications for these findings are that the tools that mindfulness-based modalities employ could be useful to feminist therapists and clients. The author therefore proposes Mindfulness Based Feminist Therapy (MBFT) as an integration of these two approaches.