From childhood emotional maltreatment to depressive symptoms in adulthood: The roles of self-compassion and shame.

Background: Emotional abuse is a form of maltreatment that most strongly predicts adult depressive symptoms in community samples. Introject theories suggest that some depressive symptoms stem from survivors having learned to treat themselves the way they were treated by their perpetrators.

Objective: Malevolent introjects may undermine self-compassion, which may subsequently maintain feelings of shame.