Compassionate self-talk enhances autonomic flexibility during cognitive stress in generalized anxiety disorder: a randomized controlled trial with HRV evidence (opens in new tab)

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), characterized by persistent and excessive worry, exhibits high treatment resistance. While self-compassion training shows promise in alleviating anxiety, its acute effects on stress-related autonomic regulation in GAD remain unclear. This randomized controlled trial examined whether a single-session compassionate self-talk protocol improves emotional and autonomic stress responses in GAD, focusing on high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) as an inde...