Emotion Regulation and Self-Compassion in Relation to Symptoms
Let’s go to the evidence! After taking a break through the summer and fall I am getting back to sharing the evidence with you all to support the work I do here with neuroplastic symptoms. Let’s look at this study today. This recent paper (July 2025) titled: “The Relationship Between Difficulties in Emotion Regulation, Self-Compassion, and Somatization in Nursing Students” really highlighted two major components to healing neuroplastic symptoms- 1) emotion regulation and 2) self-compassion.
Here’s what they found looking at 351 nursing students and somatic symptoms: “The finding of a positive relationship between difficulties in emotion regulation and somatization in this study indicates that the emotional challenges faced by nursing students can also manifest as physical symptoms. The negative relationship between self-compassion and both difficulties in emotion regulation and somatization suggests that students with higher levels of self-compassion manage emotional difficulties better and, as a result, experience fewer stress-related physical symptoms.”
So we can see from this research that:
- nursing students who have difficulties in regulating emotions are more likely to have physical symptoms (neuroplastic symptoms).
- students who had higher levels of self-compassion managed their emotions better and then had less neuroplastic symptoms.
So positive takeaways for you are we want to learn to regulate emotions in healthy ways and we want to cultivate self-compassion. Doing these two things can help to alleviate physical symptoms of stress (neuroplastic symptoms). Reach out if you want or need help in how to do this.
