Investigation of the relationship between insecured attachment styles and self-compassion in psychologist and counselors

Attachment is related to the quality of one's relationships and the care that one provides to others, as well as to the care given to oneself. There are research findings that the choice of being a psychotherapist is affected by experiences in early childhood and that attachment styles can affect relationships with clients during the therapy process. It is also stated that insecure attachment styles limit the compassion that a person can show to others. The aim of this study is to evaluate the attachment styles and self-compassion of psychologists and counselors in terms of different variables and to examine the relationship between attachment and self-compassion levels according to the basis of specific variables. In order to achieve this aim, graduates of psychology and counseling and guidance department between the ages of 23-70 living in Turkey were tried to be reached via online platforms and they were asked to volunteer to fill in the scales. In this study, to collect data, Demographic information form, Self-Compassion Scale and Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory II were used. As a result, 254 female 29 male and 240 psychology major, 43 counseling major with a total of 283 participants replied. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 29.0. Depending on the normal distribution, parametric tests were used to analyse the data which were t-test, ANOVA and Pearson Correlation coefficient. The independent variables were gender, age, education level, professional experience, department graduated and relationship status, performing therapy and having self-compassion training. The dependent variables are anxious, avoidant, insecure attachment and self-compassion levels. As a result of the analysis, it was found that attachment differed according to the variables of education level, performing therapy, major and having self-compassion training, while self-compassion differed according to gender, age, relationship status, and having self-compassion training. The results also demonstrated that there is a negative correlation between insecure attachment and self-compassion.