The Influence of Self-Compassion Intervention on Stress and its Manifestations in Indians Working in the Service Sector During the COVID 19 Pandemic

Abstract

While working in the service sector under conditions like a global pandemic like COVID 19 pandemic can be extremely stressful to experience and deal with, fostering self-compassion can help reduce the stress experienced and manifested by individuals. This study focuses on determining whether a self-compassion intervention including activities that foster self-compassion will indeed help in the reduction of stress experienced and reported by individuals undergoing the intervention or not and whether there would be any gender difference in the level of self-compassion. To test this, 30 participants of Indian origin working in the service sector of age group 23-30 years were selected using purposive sampling and allocated randomly in two groups, the intervention group (n=15) and control group (n=15). Both groups were required to fill a self- report questionnaire pre and post a 7-day period, recording socio-demographics, and three scales- Self- Compassion Scale (Neff, 2003), measuring stress through Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale, and Common Response to stress Scale recording the manifestation of stress. The Intervention group was given self-compassion activities to do for 7 consecutive days, while the control group was left ideal.  Data Analysis revealed that the self-compassion intervention has a significant influence on the levels of stress. This study thus indicates that self-compassion interventions can be an effective method to reduce the amount of stress experienced and manifested in the individual. No gender difference in the level of self-compassion is determined.