List of Tasks for EFT-SCP

Day 0: initial measures.

Filling out the pre-measurements.

Day 1: How would you treat a friend (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Gilbert [36], Neff 2017 [49], Rockman 2015 [50]). This task was designed to help participants realize how differently we treat ourselves and our friends during times of adversity. B-y evoking a compassionate approach towards a friend, we help them to turn the compassionate language towards themselves. During the first day of the intervention participants are introduced to the main concepts of self-compassion.

Day 2: Self-compassionate body scan (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Gilbert 2010 [36], Neff 2017 [49], Rockman 2015 [50]). The self-compassionate body scan exercise is a meditation task aimed at relaxing and slowing down participants away from the rapid pace of daily life. Participants are instructed to mindfully notice and sense each part of their body from the legs, up to the chest, head, and then gradually let the tension leave the body.

Day 3: How self-critical are you? (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Neff 2004 [51]). This exercise guides participants through their own level of self-criticism and self-judgment and their beliefs about them. Respondents reflect on various questions about appearance, career, relationships, school, parenthood, finance, etc. In the second part, participants are guided towards accepting their inadequacies and feeling compassion toward themselves.

Day 4: My self-criticism (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Gilbert 2010 [36]). This exercise guides participants towards imagining a person that represents their self-critical part (face, facial expressions, gestures, movements, etc.). Participants then have to formulate specific self-critical messages and afterwards state how they would feel, think, and behave and what they would need after the self-criticism.

Day 5: Change your self-critical dialogue (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Neff 2017 [49]). In this exercise, participants are instructed to use their knowledge about self-criticism to recognize and learn to change their self-critical voice in everyday life. By recognizing and changing the inner dialogue to self-compassionate messages, they can live a richer and less stressful life. Participants are guided through examples into reformulating their inner self-critical speech to make it more compassionate.

Day 6: Expressing protective anger—self-protection (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Halamová 2013 [52]). Participants are instructed to recall an event of adversity, criticism, or shame that was aimed at them and to imagine how a close friend would react or protect that person. In the second step, participants reformulate the same message from their own perspective, from themselves to themselves.

Day 7: Self-protective language (Halamová 2018 [48]). People often use incomprehensible, unsupportive, resigning, helpless, or submissive language towards each other and others. This exercise teaches them to reformulate their inner voice, so it is more supportive of their needs and wants in everyday situations.

Day 8: Assertive rights (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Smith 1975 [53]). The goal of this exercise is to teach assertiveness in everyday life situations. Participants are presented with various assertive rights statements as well as manipulative misbelief so they can compare them and say how differently they would behave if they allowed themselves to be assertive instead of being manipulated in a specific situation.

Day 9: Practise saying NO (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Praško 2007 [54]). In this exercise, participants are instructed to create a simple assertive rejection with no explanation or apology and an “emphatic no” that expresses their own feelings, explanation, empathy towards another, and suggests a compromise.

Day 10: Expressing compassion towards the self (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Halamová 2013 [52]). task requires the participant to recall a moment when they were self-critical and imagine the same situation happening to a vulnerable child. Participants are then instructed to express compassion towards the child and then do the same to themselves.

Day 11: A compassionate letter from a friend (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Gilbert 2010 [36], Neff 2017 [49], Rockman 2015 [50]). In this exercise, participants write about what they do not like about themselves and how this makes them feel. In the second part, participants imagine a friend writing a letter from a compassionate perspective about their flaws and inadequacies.

Day 12: Self-compassionate mirror (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Petrocchi 2017 [55]). Participants are asked to look in the mirror and into their own eyes at the end of the day and practise being self-compassionate about pleasant or unpleasant events that happened to them during the day. Afterwards, they are asked to write about their experience of the task.

Day 13. Self-compassionate language (Halamová 2018 [48]). People often use nonunderstanding, unkind, cold, or critical inner speech towards themselves. This exercise teaches them to reformulate their inner voice, so it is more compassionate, kind, warm, and understanding of themselves in everyday situations.

Day 14: Self-compassion and self-protection in daily life—planning and practice (Halamová 2018 [48], inspired by Germer 2016 [56]). This task involves thinking about ways to be more self-compassionate and self-protective physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, financially, ecologically, and developmentally in daily life. In the second step, they are asked to incorporate the plan into their everyday life.

Day 15–18: after-intervention measures.

Filling out the post-measurements.