Self-compassion improves emotion regulation and mental health outcomes: A pilot study of an online self-compassion program for autistic adults.
A short online course teaches autistic adults to treat themselves kindly and feel better, but half need clinician backup when tough feelings surface.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Cai et al. (2024) ran a five-week online class for autistic adults.
Each person worked alone at home through videos, writing tasks, and short quizzes.
They wanted to see if learning self-kindness would help users feel and cope better.
What they found
Most adults said they were kinder to themselves and felt less upset after the course.
About half also had brief hard moments, like painful memories or extra anxiety.
The team says the gains are worth it, but users need a helper on call.
How this fits with other research
Cai et al. (2023) surveyed autistic and non-autistic adults first.
That paper showed autistic people score lower on self-kindness and feel more depression.
The new pilot acts on that gap by teaching the missing skill, not just measuring it.
Ozturk et al. (2025) pooled 15 parent studies and found big drops in stress when moms and dads learned self-compassion.
Together, the two Ying papers and the meta-analysis form a chain: autistic people lack the skill, the skill can be taught online, and the same skill also helps the parents who support them.
Why it matters
You can now add a free, five-week self-kindness module to adult services.
Tell clients they may feel worse for a day or two, and give an email or Zoom way to reach you.
Track mood each week so you can step in early if upset spikes.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a one-page self-kindness script to your adult check-in email and ask, "Did anything upsetting pop up after you tried it?"
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Self-compassion is when we are aware of our feelings and thoughts, are friendly toward ourselves, and realize everyone feels pain and makes mistakes. Self-compassion is associated with having better mental health and well-being in autistic and non-autistic people. But we do not know if autistic people's self-compassion can be improved through psychoeducation and self-compassion practices. We co-produced an online self-guided self-compassion program based on evidence-based self-compassion practices for autistic adults called the Self-compassion Program for Autistic Adults. This program included live-experiences videos of autistic adults reflecting on their self-compassion and self-critical experiences. This study piloted the program with 39 autistic adults. We wanted to see if these autistic adults' self-compassion, emotion regulation, mental health, and psychological well-being improved after completing this program. We found that the autistic participants' self-compassion, emotion regulation, mental health, and psychological well-being improved significantly after completing the program over 5 weeks. We also found that just over half of the participants reported experiencing negative reactions associated with self-compassion practices. We suggested some clinical implications, including a recommendation for emotion regulation interventions to incorporate self-compassion to help promote access to the affiliative system. In addition, autistic adults who are psychologically vulnerable may need to work with mental health professionals while developing self-compassion to help manage the possible negative reactions associated with some self-compassion practices.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2024 · doi:10.1177/13623613241235061