Factors promoting shame resilience in adult survivors of childhood bullying

Abstract

A great deal of research supports that being bullied during childhood can have negative effects on mental health that last into adulthood but little is known about factors that may help survivors of bullying cope with experiences of shame. Based on the integration of attachment theory and cognitive adaptation theory, it was hypothesized that emotion regulation and self-compassion would mediate the relationship between experiences of bullying in childhood and shame in adulthood and that attachment security would be positively related to self-compassion and emotion regulation, and negatively related to shame. Three hundred twenty-two undergraduate and graduate college students completed surveys examining their experiences of being bullied and cyberbullied in childhood, attachment security, ability to regulate emotions, selfcompassion, and shame. Results from structural equation modeling found support that the primary model, which integrated attachment theory and cognitive adaptation theory, was a better fit than the alternate model, which excluded the variable of attachment security. Results from this study support that shame in adulthood for survivors of childhood bullying is significantly influenced by attachment security, amount of childhood bullying, emotion regulation, and self-compassion. There was also support for a connection between attachment security and emotion regulation and between attachment security and selfcompassion.