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Abstract

Sexual shame is a salient experience for sexual and gender minority (SGM) women. While mindfulness is known as having protective effects against shame, little is known about why mindfulness sometimes has adverse impacts. As individual differences are known to influence outcomes related to mindfulness, the purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that self-critical or self-compassionate appraisals of internal experiences will influence whether mindfulness is helpful or harmful for sexual shame among SGM women; such that self-criticism will weaken the protective association between mindfulness and sexual shame while self-kindness will strengthen the association. Participants (N = 384) were SGM women (75.8% cisgender; 68.2% white) recruited through Prolific (an online tool designed for research participant selection) who completed a web-based survey with measures assessing trait mindful awareness, self-kindness, self-criticism, and sexual shame. The self-kindness and the self-criticism moderation models supported our hypotheses. Specifically, among SGM women low in self-kindness or high in self-criticism, greater mindful awareness was associated with higher sexual shame, whereas the reverse was true for those high in self-kindness or low in self-criticism. These findings challenge universal mindfulness recommendations, as trait self-kindness and self-criticism appear to influence whether mindful awareness links with increased or decreased sexual shame. Results highlight the importance of assessing for self-criticism and self-kindness before mindfulness-based interventions are indicated for SGM women experiencing sexual shame.