Cultural Meanings of Self-Compassion: Authorising and Contesting the Compassionate Self Across Diverse Contexts

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Self-compassion is often presented as an intrapersonal capacity, but this framing can obscure a prior cultural question: what kind of self is a person invited to become, and when is that position socially legitimate? This international author-reflexive qualitative inquiry analysed written reflections from 18 co-authors on cultural orientations and positive and negative meanings of self-compassion. Reflexive thematic analysis identified four modes through which the compassionate self was authorised or contested: moral and spiritual authorisation; relational responsibility; functionally disciplined self-care; and social policing through associations with weakness, indulgence, laziness, or reduced discipline. Gendered and generational expectations shaped these positions. We propose the cultural legitimation of the compassionate self to describe how moral, relational, spiritual, and occupational vocabularies make self-compassion permissible. This perspective reveals an ambivalence: framing self-compassion through responsibility and productivity may widen acceptability while making self-care conditional on continued usefulness to others.</p>