2026-09-03 · self-compassion, weight loss psychology, Kristin Neff, self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness, shame vs guilt, self-compassion break, adherence, behavioral
Written by Elena Ruiz
Elena Ruiz is a WeightFAQ staff writer focused on movement, sleep, stress, and the behavioral side of weight loss. She has written about walking routines, NEAT and daily activity, insomnia and cortisol, and how anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and antidepressant or birth-control side effects can complicate weight change. Her articles favor small, consistent habit shifts over overhauls, and she often covers telehealth and behavioral-therapy programs that support them. Elena writes for readers whose weight goals bump into sleep debt, medication effects, or a busy nervous system.
22 min read
Medically reviewed on Sep 3, 2026
Weight Loss and Self-Compassion: The Counter-Intuitive Skill That Beats Self-Punishment for Adherence
Quick answer
Self-compassion is the counter-intuitive weight-loss skill: self-critical dieters lose less weight and regain more than self-compassionate ones. Adams & Leary 2007 (J Soc Clin Psychol) showed self-compassion buffered restrained eaters against the preload-induced binge that self-criticism drove, and Mantzios 2015 (Health Psychol Rev) meta-reviewed self-compassion in weight management with consistent positive effects on adherence, body image, and emotional eating. The operational framework is Kristin Neff’s three-component model (self-kindness / common humanity / mindfulness), and the in-the-moment tool is the 5-part self-compassion break. This pillar sits alongside weight loss and body image, weight-loss self-sabotage, weight loss and perfectionism / all-or-nothing thinking, emotional eating and weight loss, and weight-loss fatigue and burnout as the dedicated read on the specific skill — not attitude, not affirmation, not vibe — that changes how the shame after a slip does or does not fire the next slip.
The evidence base
The self-compassion research base is smaller than the diet-composition literature but consistent — every well-run trial points the same direction, and no trial has shown self-compassion training makes weight-loss outcomes worse.
| Study | Design | Population | Key finding | Notable caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adams & Leary 2007 (J Soc Clin Psychol) | Laboratory manipulation | n=84 restrained eaters | Self-compassion arm ate less after a preload; self-criticism arm ate more — the abstinence-violation cascade in a controlled setting | Short single-session study; young-adult sample |
| Neff 2003 (Self and Identity) | Scale development | Undergraduate samples | Validated the 26-item Self-Compassion Scale (SCS); established the three-component model as measurable construct | Foundational, not outcome-focused |
| Mantzios 2015 (Health Psychol Rev) | Meta-review | Weight-management studies to date | Consistent positive effects of self-compassion on adherence, body satisfaction, and emotional-eating patterns | Heterogeneous designs; small trials predominate |
| Kelly 2014 (Behav Ther) | Longitudinal | Eating-disorder-symptom cohort | Higher baseline self-compassion prospectively predicted lower eating pathology at follow-up | Clinical sample; generalization to general dieters requires care |
| Braun 2016 (Body Image) | Cross-sectional | Adult women | Self-compassion correlated with intuitive eating and inversely with disordered-eating cognitions | Cross-sectional; cannot establish causation |
| Breines & Chen 2012 (Pers Soc Psychol Bull) | Experimental | Adult participants after induced failure | Self-compassion prompt led to MORE effort on the next task than a self-esteem prompt — direct test of the “self-compassion makes you lazy” concern | Laboratory task; not weight-specific |
The through-line: self-compassion is not a soft add-on. It is a specific cognitive-emotional skill with a defined mechanism (it prevents the shame cascade that fires the next slip) and a defined intervention (Neff’s protocols), and the trial evidence is that it improves adherence rather than undermining it.
Neff’s three-component model
The framework almost every self-compassion trial builds on comes from Neff 2003 (Self and Identity), which identified three components that together make up self-compassion — each of which is the direct alternative to a specific unhealthy pattern.
- Self-kindness vs self-judgment. Speaking to yourself the way you would speak to a friend who slipped, not the way an internal critic would. The test: read your last “I’m so stupid, I ate the whole bag” self-talk. Would you say that sentence to a close friend in the same situation? If the answer is no, it is a candidate for the reframe.
- Common humanity vs isolation. Recognizing that struggling with weight is a shared human experience — not a personal defect that means you are uniquely broken. Roughly two-thirds of American adults have overweight or obesity by BMI, and even higher proportions have tried to lose weight and regained it. The isolation frame (“everyone else can do this but me”) is measurably false; the common-humanity frame is measurably true.
- Mindfulness vs over-identification. Noticing “I overate at dinner” without becoming “I am a total failure who can’t do this.” Mindfulness holds the experience lightly enough that you can respond to it; over-identification fuses you with it so completely that response is not possible. This is the piece most people skip — they jump from the slip straight to a kindness statement, which lands as fake without the mindful naming first.
All three components together are what the research calls self-compassion. Any one alone is thinner: kindness without common humanity reads as self-pity; common humanity without mindfulness slides into “everyone struggles, so why bother”; mindfulness without kindness is bare observation that can still slide into shame. The three-legged stool holds because all three legs are there.
Why self-criticism backfires
The reason self-criticism is the wrong tool is not motivational — it is mechanical. Adams & Leary 2007 ran the specific test: participants ate a preload (a donut) they had been told was “diet-breaking,” then were offered candy. The self-compassion arm — prompted with a brief self-compassion statement between the preload and the candy — ate less candy. The self-criticism arm ate more. The mechanism the researchers named: self-criticism produced shame, shame produced avoidance-and-numbing (“may as well eat the whole thing”), and the compensatory episode followed. Self-compassion interrupted the shame surge at the front end and left the participant with enough cognitive room to make a different choice.
The distinction between guilt and shame from Tangney 2007 (Annu Rev Psychol) explains why this works. Guilt says “I did a bad thing” and drives repair — an apology, a course correction, a next-meal reset. Shame says “I am bad” and drives hiding — skipping the weigh-in, closing the tracking app, ghosting the whole plan. A weight-loss protocol needs the repair behavior; it cannot survive the hiding one. Self-compassion is the mechanism that keeps you in the guilt lane and out of the shame lane after a slip.
Kelly 2014 and Braun 2016 replicated the direction of the effect in different samples, and the relapse-prevention literature (Marlatt & Gordon 1985, foundational) had already shown that self-blame after a lapse predicts full relapse in addiction contexts. The read is consistent: the self-critical dieter is the more likely regainer, not the more disciplined one.
Self-compassion vs self-esteem
This is the pivotal distinction, and getting it wrong sends people back to self-criticism when self-esteem strategies fail. Self-esteem is contingent on outcome: “I feel good about myself because I lost weight.” When the scale slips, self-esteem drops. Self-compassion is unconditional: it travels with you through the weeks the scale doesn’t move, the family visit that ended in three plates of pasta, the whole holiday season that didn’t go to plan.
Neff 2011 (Self-Esteem and Self-Compassion Compared) tested them head-to-head across matched samples and found self-compassion produced more stable positive affect, less social comparison, less contingent self-worth, and lower ego-defensiveness — while delivering equivalent well-being. For weight loss specifically, the reason self-compassion is the right target is that weight is a noisy dependent variable. Water fluctuations, cycle timing, sodium load, glycogen state, and normal daily variability all swing the scale 2–5 lb regardless of behavior. If your emotional stability is tied to a signal that noisy, you will spend most of your journey emotionally unstable, and the emotional instability itself will drive the sabotage cascade. Self-compassion is compatible with the noisy signal; self-esteem is not.
The reframe: aim for a stable relationship with yourself that lets you keep executing the plan through noisy outcomes, not for outcome-linked feelings that spike and crash with the scale.
The 5-part self-compassion break
The single portable practice in this whole framework. It comes from Neff’s published protocol, takes about 60 seconds, and is designed for use in the moment — the drive home from a lapse, the hallway after the weigh-in, the pause before opening the fridge for the third time in an hour.
- “This is a moment of struggle.” Mindfulness — name what is happening without dramatizing it. Not “I have ruined everything,” just “this is hard right now.”
- “Struggling with weight is part of being human.” Common humanity — recognize that this experience is shared by millions of adults, right now, this evening. You are not uniquely broken.
- “May I be kind to myself right now.” Self-kindness — the direct statement. It does not need to be spoken aloud; it needs to be said internally with some intention.
- Place one hand over the heart. Soothing-touch anchor. This engages the parasympathetic nervous system through physical contact — the same mechanism used in self-holding exercises in somatic-experiencing work. It grounds the kindness statement in the body.
- Ask “what do I need right now?” And answer with one small concrete act. Water. A walk around the block. A phone call to a friend. Sleep. Not a food answer unless food is genuinely the answer (hungry and legitimately due for a meal).
Copy the five steps into your phone notes app. Read them the first ten times you run the break — do not try to memorize them under stress. After ten reps most people have it.
Common self-compassion misconceptions
The five most common misreadings of the framework — each one a load-bearing objection that stops readers from actually practicing.
| Misconception | What is actually true |
|---|---|
| ”Self-compassion is self-pity.” | Self-pity fuses with the story (“poor me, everything is terrible”). Self-compassion holds it lightly (“this is hard, and it is also a shared human experience”) — the common-humanity leg is exactly what distinguishes them. |
| ”Self-compassion is soft and will make me lazy.” | Breines & Chen 2012 directly tested this: self-compassion after failure produced MORE effort on the next task than self-esteem. The mechanism is that shame drives avoidance; kindness clears the way to try again. |
| ”Self-compassion means giving up my goals.” | It means removing shame from the process, not the goals. You can pursue a 30-lb loss with a self-compassionate stance; the goals do not change, the response to slips does. |
| ”I need to be hard on myself to change.” | This is the exact belief the research contradicts — and it is the belief most self-critical dieters have used for years while regaining every loss. The evidence says self-compassion produces better adherence, not worse. |
| ”Self-compassion is just positive thinking.” | Positive thinking paints over pain. Self-compassion explicitly acknowledges the pain first (the mindfulness leg — “this is a moment of struggle”) and then responds with kindness. It is not the same skill. |
If two or more of these are running in the background as reasons not to practice, name which one is loudest and read the right column out loud. The objections lose most of their weight when they are named.
6-scenario reframing table
The self-critical thought, then the self-compassionate reframe — for the six most common weight-loss moments where the shame cascade fires.
| The self-critical thought | The self-compassionate reframe |
|---|---|
| ”I ate the whole pint of ice cream." | "I ate more than I planned. That’s information, not identity." |
| "I’m so lazy for skipping the gym." | "My body wanted rest today. One skipped workout doesn’t erase the pattern." |
| "The scale is up 3 lb — I’m hopeless." | "Weight fluctuates 2–5 lb from water alone. My 7-day average is what tells me the trend." |
| "I’ve tried a hundred diets." | "I’ve kept learning what doesn’t work. That’s data, not defect." |
| "Everyone else can lose weight but me." | "This is hard for millions of people. I am not uniquely broken." |
| "I gained back the 15 lb." | "That happens to most people who lose weight — the biology is real. What I know now is more than I knew then.” |
Save this table to your phone lock screen or your fridge. The reframes are not affirmations — they are more accurate readings of what is actually happening. “I’ve tried a hundred diets” is a story; “I’ve kept learning what doesn’t work” is what actually happened, told with less shame. See weight loss and perfectionism / all-or-nothing thinking for the specific 60-minute get-back-on-track script that pairs with these reframes.
Journaling and letter-writing protocols
Two of Neff’s classic exercises, both freely available on her site, both worth 10–15 minutes of practice.
The compassionate letter to myself. Sit down with one page. Write yourself a letter from the perspective of a wise, kind friend — someone who knows your whole history with weight, all the attempts and reversals, and cares about you unconditionally. Address the current struggle directly. What would that friend say? What would they notice about what you are actually facing? What would they remind you about your own resilience, your own reasons, your own body? A letter takes about 10 minutes to write and about 3 minutes to re-read the next morning. Weekly practice is the standard cadence. Link to the broader weight-loss journaling protocol for how this fits into a wider journaling practice.
“What would I say to a friend?” The 30-second pause practice. When self-criticism spikes — “I’m so stupid, I ate the whole thing” — stop. Ask: if my closest friend just said that sentence to me, about themselves, what would I tell them? Script it out (spoken aloud, in your head, or written on the same phone note). Then re-read what you wrote and let it apply to you. The friend-script trick works because most people are already fluent in compassion for others; the block is only in the direction they aim it.
Both exercises are the specific structured behavior the research measures. If you want a numerical marker of change, the Self-Compassion Scale short-form (SCS-SF, 12 items) is freely available on Neff’s website and can be taken as a baseline and again at 8 weeks. Rising scores track the trait-level shift.
Working with body-and-food shame
Body shame and food shame are the two categories of shame that the weight-loss reader encounters most, and each has a specific self-compassion move. Salvo 2019 (Body Image) showed self-compassion mediated the relationship between body image and weight — the practice is not a magic feeling, it is the specific mediator that reduces body dissatisfaction’s grip on eating behavior. Sirois 2015 (Health Psychol Rev, meta-analysis) confirmed self-compassion associated with healthier behaviors across weight, exercise, and stress-management outcomes. Self-compassion is the coping skill; the shame it is being applied to has its own literature and its own protocol — the WBIS-anchored mechanism review, the 4-driver map (early food shame, medical weight-shame, cultural stigma, internalized loop), and the medical-advocacy scripts live in the dedicated weight loss and shame pillar.
For body shame: the frame is “the scale reads what it reads — your worth does not.” The number is a data point about mass, not a verdict about identity. Pair the self-compassion break with the CBT-BI protocol in weight loss and body image, and shift the metric toward non-scale victories so the daily emotional load is not carried entirely by one noisy number.
For food shame: the frame is that food carries no moral weight. There is no “good” or “bad” food outside a specific plan and a specific goal — chocolate cake is not a moral failure, and kale is not a moral achievement. Removing the moral frame removes the shame that drives the compensatory episode. See emotional eating and weight loss for the affect-regulation pair to this cognitive skill.
4-week self-compassion practice ladder
The shortest reasonable on-ramp to trait-level change. Take the SCS-SF (12-item Self-Compassion Scale short-form, free on Neff’s website) at day 0 and day 28. Rising scores track the shift.
- Week 1 — one self-compassion break per day at a fixed anchor. Morning coffee is a good anchor because it is a stable time and you are usually alone with the drink. Run the 5-part break. That is it for week 1 — build the reflex first, add nothing else.
- Week 2 — add the friend script. Any time self-criticism spikes, run the “what would I say to a friend” pause. Keep the daily morning break. Two practices now, both short.
- Week 3 — add one weekly compassionate letter. Sunday evening, 10 minutes, one page. Re-read it Monday morning before starting the week. Keep the daily break and the friend script.
- Week 4 — add the 6-scenario reframing table for real-time use. Screenshot the table, set it as your phone lock screen or a widget you actually see. When one of the six sabotage thoughts fires, read the reframe out loud (or subvocally). Keep everything from weeks 1–3.
By the end of week 4 you have four layered practices — a daily break, an on-demand friend script, a weekly letter, and a real-time reframe library — and about 4–6 minutes per day of active practice. The trait-level SCS-SF change usually shows up between weeks 6 and 10 in the trial literature; do not judge the ladder at week 4. If the daily break is still landing as fake at week 4, the fix is almost always to slow down step 1 (mindfulness — “this is a moment of struggle”) and let the naming register before moving to the kindness statement.
What this article does not do
- This is not a substitute for treatment in an active clinical eating disorder. If you are experiencing binge episodes with loss of control ≥1×/week for ≥3 months, purging behavior, or restriction under 1,200 kcal/day producing weight loss beyond a healthy range, the first move is a specialist evaluation, not a self-compassion practice. NEDA Helpline: 1-800-931-2237 (call or text). See binge-eating disorder and weight loss, bulimia recovery and weight, and anorexia recovery and weight restoration.
- This is not a substitute for therapy for readers with trauma, active suicidality, or major depression. Self-compassion practice is a useful adjunct to trauma-focused therapy (EMDR, IFS, somatic-experiencing) but not a replacement. If you are in crisis, 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US) is the number. See depression and weight loss for the depression-and-weight overlap.
- Self-compassion does not mean tolerating abuse. Leaving a relationship where body comments, food policing, or shame-based interactions are the norm is itself a self-compassionate act, not a failure of kindness. See weight loss and relationships for the couples-and-family reading on the interpersonal side.
- This is not motivational content. The framework is a specific skill with a specific mechanism (interrupting the shame cascade after a slip). If the practice is landing flat, the miss is usually the mindfulness step (step 1 of the break), not a lack of “belief” in the practice.
How this connects to the rest of the site
- Body-image work and CBT-BI: weight loss and body image
- The identity-driven reversal that self-compassion buffers against: weight-loss self-sabotage
- The abstinence-violation cascade after a single slip: weight loss and perfectionism / all-or-nothing thinking
- The 5-lever motivation rebuild self-compassion supports: weight-loss motivation
- Adherence exhaustion vs cognitive-cascade adherence collapse: weight-loss fatigue and burnout
- The journaling protocol this practice fits into: weight-loss journaling
- The affect-regulation pair to the cognitive skill: emotional eating and weight loss
- The bereavement-specific version of the shame-vs-guilt distinction and the acute-grief comfort-eating carveout: weight loss and grief
- The concrete return playbook where the self-compassion break becomes the between-lapse-and-next-meal protocol (the Adams & Leary 2007 preload-binge finding operationalized): weight loss and setback recovery covers the 4-tier ladder, the 5-question setback audit, and the STOP Regain early-warning tools that pair with the self-compassion skill.
- The identity layer that self-compassion buffers when the AVE step 3 “I am not the kind of person who does this” identity conclusion fires: weight loss and identity change covers Rothman self-consistency, the Marlatt AVE reframed as an identity move, and the 5 identity-vote levers that pair with the self-compassion break in this article.
- Moving the daily metric off the scale: non-scale victories
- The anticipatory-fear-of-hunger version of the same anxiety loop, with a 3-question filter, a 30-minute wait rule, and the 2-week appetite-awareness protocol: weight loss and fear of hunger — the self-compassion break in this article is the between-signal-and-response beat that stops the fear from firing the preload eating and post-hunger overshoot cascade.
Frequently asked questions
What is self-compassion in the context of weight loss? Self-compassion is the practice of responding to your own weight-loss struggles the way you would respond to a friend’s — with kindness instead of criticism, a recognition that struggle is a shared human experience, and a mindful acknowledgement of what is happening without over-identifying with it. The framework comes from Kristin Neff’s three-component model (Neff 2003, Self and Identity) — self-kindness vs self-judgment, common humanity vs isolation, and mindfulness vs over-identification. In a weight-loss context, it is the counter-intuitive skill that outperforms self-punishment for actual adherence: Adams & Leary 2007 (J Soc Clin Psychol) showed self-compassion buffered restrained eaters against the preload-induced binge that self-criticism drove, and Mantzios 2015 (Health Psychol Rev) meta-reviewed self-compassion in weight management with consistent positive effects.
Won’t being kind to myself make me lose motivation to lose weight? The research says the opposite. Breines & Chen 2012 (Pers Soc Psychol Bull) tested this directly — participants who received a self-compassion prompt after failing a task put in more effort on the next task than participants who got a self-esteem prompt. Self-compassion removes the shame that drives avoidance-and-numbing (the “may as well” spiral) and replaces it with approach-and-problem-solving. The belief that you need to be hard on yourself to change is one of the specific misconceptions this framework is designed to correct — the mechanism is shame drives hiding, so a self-critical dieter is more likely to skip weigh-ins, stop tracking after a rough week, and quit the whole attempt after a milestone slip.
How is self-compassion different from self-esteem? Self-esteem is contingent — “I feel good about myself because I lost weight” — and it drops when the outcome slips. Self-compassion is unconditional — it travels with you through weeks the scale doesn’t move. Neff 2011 (Self-Esteem and Self-Compassion Compared) found that self-compassion produced more stable positive affect and less social comparison than self-esteem across matched samples. For weight loss specifically, this matters because weight itself is a noisy dependent variable — water fluctuations, cycle timing, sodium and glycogen swings, and normal daily variability all move the number by 2–5 lb regardless of behavior. If your emotional stability is tied to that number, you will spend most of your journey unstable. Self-compassion is the target because it is compatible with a noisy outcome; self-esteem is not.
What do I say to myself when I mess up my diet? Run the 5-part self-compassion break, which takes about 60 seconds: (1) “This is a moment of struggle” — name what is happening without dramatizing it, (2) “Struggling with weight is part of being human” — recognize that millions of adults share this experience, (3) “May I be kind to myself right now” — the direct self-kindness statement, (4) place one hand over your heart — the soothing-touch anchor that engages the parasympathetic system, and (5) ask “what do I need right now?” and answer with one small concrete act (water, a walk, sleep, a call). The self-compassion break comes from Neff’s published protocol and has held up in trials as a portable in-the-moment intervention.
Does research support self-compassion for weight loss? Yes. Adams & Leary 2007 showed self-compassion buffered restrained eaters against a preload-induced binge — the classic abstinence-violation cascade — while the self-criticism arm ate more. Kelly 2014 (Behav Ther) found self-compassion prospectively predicted lower eating pathology. Braun 2016 (Body Image) linked self-compassion to intuitive eating. Mantzios 2015 (Health Psychol Rev) meta-reviewed the weight-management literature with consistent positive effects on adherence, body image, and emotional eating. The evidence base is smaller than the diet-composition literature but consistent, and it points the same direction as the relapse-prevention research (Marlatt & Gordon 1985) that self-blame after a slip drives the next slip.
How do I practice self-compassion when I really hate my body? Start with mindfulness of what is happening — “I am having the thought that I hate my body” — rather than fusion with it — “my body is hateful.” Salvo 2019 (Body Image) showed self-compassion mediated the relationship between body image and weight change; the practice is a mediator, not a magic feeling. Add the guilt-vs-shame distinction from Tangney 2007 (Annu Rev Psychol): “I don’t like this photo of me” (guilt-adjacent, about the situation) is different from “I am disgusting” (shame, about identity). The letter-writing exercise — write yourself a letter from the perspective of a wise, kind friend responding to your body-image struggle — is Neff’s classic protocol for this specific case. Pair it with the weight loss and body image protocol for the CBT-BI mirror-exposure work.
Is self-compassion the same as intuitive eating? No, but they overlap. Intuitive eating is a framework for how you decide what and when to eat (hunger, fullness, satisfaction, no forbidden foods). Self-compassion is how you respond to yourself when any eating framework is going badly. Braun 2016 (Body Image) found self-compassion predicted intuitive-eating scores in a cross-sectional sample, and the two skills reinforce each other, but you can practice one without the other. Self-compassion is compatible with structured meal planning, calorie tracking, GLP-1 medications, or bariatric post-op protocols — it is about the relationship with yourself while executing the plan, not the plan itself.
How long does self-compassion practice take to help? Adams & Leary 2007’s laboratory manipulation produced measurable effects on eating behavior within a single session, which means the in-the-moment self-compassion break can work the first time you use it. Sustained trait-level change — the kind you can measure on the Self-Compassion Scale — takes longer, typically 4–8 weeks of daily practice. The 4-week practice ladder in this article (one daily break in week 1, add the friend script in week 2, add a weekly letter in week 3, add real-time reframes in week 4) is the shortest reasonable on-ramp. If you have been trying for 8 weeks with no felt shift, the most common miss is skipping the mindfulness step (naming what is happening) and jumping straight to the kindness statement, which lands as fake.
Sources
- Adams CE, Leary MR. Promoting self-compassionate attitudes toward eating among restrictive and guilty eaters. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (2007).
- Neff KD. The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity (2003).
- Mantzios M, Wilson JC. Exploring mindfulness and mindfulness with self-compassion-centered interventions to assist weight loss. Health Psychology Review (2015).
- Kelly AC, Vimalakanthan K, Miller KE. Self-compassion moderates the relationship between body mass index and both eating disorder pathology and body image flexibility. Behavior Therapy (2014).
- Braun TD, Park CL, Gorin A. Self-compassion, body image, and disordered eating: A review of the literature. Body Image (2016).
- Breines JG, Chen S. Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2012).
- Neff KD, Vonk R. Self-compassion versus global self-esteem: two different ways of relating to oneself. Journal of Personality (2009/2011).
- Tangney JP, Stuewig J, Mashek DJ. Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology (2007).
- Salvo V, Kristeller J, Marin JM, et al. Self-compassion, body image and eating attitudes: mediating pathways. Body Image (2019).
- Sirois FM, Kitner R, Hirsch JK. Self-compassion, affect, and health-promoting behaviors. Health Psychology Review (2015).
- Marlatt GA, Gordon JR. Relapse Prevention: Maintenance Strategies in the Treatment of Addictive Behaviors. Guilford Press (1985).
- Neff KD. Self-Compassion Scale and free measurement tools (SCS, SCS-SF).
- National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Helpline. 1-800-931-2237.
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (US).