Self-compassion and long-term orientation

Self-compassion is kindness towards yourself in a difficult time. Self-compassion has been increasingly receiving attention in mental health research and practice. Many of my studies evaluated mental health and self-compassion in different populations, and self-compassion was consistently associated with good mental health. People who are kind to themselves tend to have good mental health, and vice versa (self-compassion systematic review is here).

In our study, we compared the levels of self-compassion between the UK and Republic of Ireland by recruiting university students. The UK and the Republic of Ireland share similar culture characteristics, but one of the greatest differences is the long-term or short-term orientation. Long-term culture can be thought as "saving" culture, whereas short-term culture as "spending" culture. Values associated with long-term culture include patience or thriftness, while values associated with short-term culture are achievement of quick results. UK culture is more towards long-term, and Irish culture is more towards short-term.

The results were that UK students scored higher on self-compassion than Irish students. This suggests the UK's long-term-oriented culture may affect self-compassion in students. Montero-Marin's study also found this relationship between long-term orientation and self-compassion. One possible explanation is that, long-term orientation requires accepting suffering is part of normal human life, and focus on here and now. These are 2 of the 3 components of self-compassion. Common humanity is accepting suffering as part of normal human life. Mindfulness is paying attention to here and now. Because of these overlaps, it is possible that people in the long-term-oriented culture have high self-compassion.

Lastly, just to note, the other component of self-compassion is self-kindness. Among the 3, I really like common humanity. I am a father of triplets+1, 2 of whom are disabled. Taking care of them has been extremely difficult. Especially the disabled boys have been hard, as they have various health problems including severe sleeping problems. My wife and I had many nights/mornings, when we both came to the living room holding one baby each, telling each other that we hate our life. But one of the things helped my mind was common humanity. I imagined many people who were experiencing similar difficulties to mine. That reduced my stress. I felt I was not alone, and I also noticed that there are many people in the worl who are in a worse situation than I. That made me acknowledge what I fortunately had. It's a powerful awareness. If you are interested in common humanity, we wrote about it in relation to peer support. Link is here.