Embodied self-compassion in an imagery rescripting context for treating aversive memories

We investigate the potential of embodied virtual reality for enhancing imagery rescripting, a well-validated therapy for treating aversive memories (Wild & Clark, 2011; Morina et al., 2017). In a mixed design paradigm, healthy participants with a mildly distressing social aversive memory will either undergo a traditional imagery rescripting (IR) session based on pure imagery with an in-sensu self compassion component or such session with an embodied self-compassion component involving virtual reality (embodied rescripting: ER). We will compare affective and physiological aspects related to the aversive memory before, right after and one week after the intervention for each group and between them. We hypothesize that the inclusion of multisensory embodied self compassion (ER group) will improve the affective relation to the aversive memory as reflected by our measures.