Understanding the roles of self-esteem, self-compassion, and fear of self-compassion in eating disorder pathology: An examination of female students and eating disorder patients

• We compared female undergraduate students and female eating disorder patients.
• The student sample had higher self-compassion and lower fear of self-compassion.
• Low self-compassion predicted eating disorder pathology among students.
• High fear of patients.

The present study examined the relative contributions of self-compassion, fear of self-compassion, and self-esteem in eating disorder pathology. One-hundred and fifty-five female undergraduate students and 97 females entering eating disorder treatment completed the Self-Compassion Scale, Fears of Compassion Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory, and Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire. T-tests revealed that the patient group had lower mean self-compassion and higher mean fear of self-compassion than the student group. When controlling for self-esteem, high fear of self-compassion emerged as the strongest predictor of eating disorder pathology in the patient group, whereas low self-compassion was the strongest predictor in the student group. These preliminary results suggest that targeting fear of self-compassion may be important when intervening with individuals suffering from an eating disorder, whereas building self-compassion may be a valuable approach for eating disorder prevention.