Mentor: Terri Messman, Ph.D.

Childhood emotional abuse is a highly prevalent, yet understudied, form of childhood maltreatment, associated with a wealth of negative outcomes. One such outcome is traumatic shame. Such traumatically-valanced shame experiences may promote aversions to self-kindness and self-compassionate behavior. As this aversion, or fears of self-compassion, is frequent in childhood emotional abuse victims, we sought to explore whether the relationship between childhood emotional abuse severity and depression symptoms severity were serially mediated by trauma-related shame and fears of self-compassion, and whether identifying as either a man or woman, may moderate such associations. A diverse community sample of 467 adults within the U.S. completed an online survey, and questions relating to the constructs of interest. Analyses demonstrated gender as nonsignificant moderator, however the indirect effect of childhood emotional abuse severity on depression symptom severity through trauma-related shame and fears of self-compassion was significant. The indirect effect of childhood emotional abuse severity on depression symptom severity through trauma-related shame was also significant. Findings indicate that the experiences of childhood emotional abuse to be similar for men and women, and that trauma-related shame is a common, important mechanism by which depression symptoms are explained.

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