Exploring the relationship between self-compassion and sleep

Abstract

Quality sleep can promote mental and physical health, and improve exercise quality. University students get insufficient quality and quantity of sleep. Self-compassion has been associated with increased sleep quality among university students but little is known about the processes that underlie this relationship. Self-compassion may lead to improved sleep through reducing maladaptive and promoting adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Self-compassion may also promote sleep through its positive association with a proactive health focus. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to explore the relationship between self-compassion and sleep and to determine if this relationship is mediated by cognitive emotion regulation strategies and a proactive health focus. In this cross-sectional study, undergraduate students (N=193) completed measures of the following constructs through an online survey; self-compassion (independent variable); self-esteem (control variable); the two sleep outcomes (sleep quality; sleep hygiene); and two proposed mediators (cognitive emotion regulation; proactive health focus). Mediation analysis using Hayes PROCESS macro revealed that, after controlling for self-esteem, two cognitive emotion regulation strategies mediated the relationship between self-compassion and sleep outcomes: self-blame mediated the relationship between self-compassion and sleep quality (b = 0.55, BCa CI [0.075, 1.093]) and rumination mediated the relationship between self-compassion and sleep-hygiene (b = -0.07, BCa CI [ -0.137, -0.002]). Proactive health focus did not mediate the relationship between self-compassion and either sleep outcome. These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting that self-compassion may be associated with positive sleep outcomes through its negative association with maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies.