Impact of Self-Compassion on Existential Anxiety in Young Adults of Pakistan

It’s not much about the existential isolation but about our existential uniqueness, the feeling that no matter how deeply connected we are with someone, there is still an unbridgeable gap between every individual and all the elements of our perceived world which can’t be covered in any way possible. Young adulthood is an age where the self-creation process starts hence, the initiation of process of understanding life experiences, experimentation and exploration of meaning in life. All these processes comes with the consequences of overwhelming experiences of existential questioning, concern, and anxiety, leading to various other negative or positive psychological outcomes, depending upon the subjective experiences. Hence the current research was aimed to study the impact of self-compassion on existential anxiety in adolescents and young adults. The population consisted of both male and females (N=280). Current study is based on a quantitative correlation survey research design and the statistical analyses was done through SPSS (version 22). Neff’s Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS-SF), and Existential anxiety questionnaire (EAQ) and Existential concern questionnaire (ECQ) scales were used. The statistical analysis involved Pearson product moment correlation, and Stepwise Regression. The finding of the study revealed that there was a significant weak negative relationship between Self-compassion and Existential Anxiety and a significant positive relationship between self-criticism and existential anxiety. Moreover, the isolation (subdomain of self-compassion) predicted 20.4% variance in level of Existential anxiety scale and 29.7% variance in Existential concern questionnaire. Following findings are significantly important regarding generating appropriate clinical interventions and provides beneficial insight into developing awareness programs on a community level