Although previous research has established a correlation between childhood sexual abuse and internalized shame in adult survivors, very little research has been done to examine how disclosure affects that correlation. An adult female sample of survivors of childhood sexual abuse (N=467) were surveyed to determine a possible moderating effect of disclosure on internalized shame. It was predicted that 1) severity of abuse would be a significant predictor of internalized shame; 2) disclosure would be a significant predictor of internalized shame; and 3) disclosure would moderate the relationship between severity of abuse and internalized shame. Through structural equation modeling using AMOS, results indicated a statistically significant positive relationship between severity and internalized shame as well as a statistically significant negative relationship between disclosure and internalized shame. However, when examining the possible moderating effect of disclosure on the relationship between severity and internalized shame, disclosure was found to have had no effect. Possible explanations for these results are given, and future research is discussed. Implications for clinical practice are included.

Many researches deal with a wide range of cause of anxiety disorders, which may include various untreated traumas, physiological causes, cognitive distortion or learned reactions. Anxiety disorders tend to create so-called the vicious circle of stress and anxiety that closes the patients, leads them to social isolation and gradual loss of life certainty. Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental illness. Major types are introduced in the thesis and they are connected with the concepts of self- compassion, shame-proneness and guilt-proneness, which have been studied abroad in recent years. The research part then brings the results of the role of self-compassion, shame- proneness and guilt-proneness in experiencing clinical anxiety, confirming the assumption that patients suffering from anxiety show a significantly lower level of self- compassion, a higher shame-proneness and internalized shame. Guilt-proneness does not show a relation with self-compassion. Details are discoussed. Key words: anxiety self-compassion shame internalized shame guilt

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe and debilitating mental disorder that is over-represented within the criminal legal system (CLS), with 15-29.5% of individuals in the CLS meeting criteria. However, little research has examined mechanisms leading to criminal involvement within this population. Potential mechanisms include positive/negative emotion dysregulation and internalized shame, which (aside from positive emotion dysregulation) have been linked to criminal involvement in other populations. Research has yet to examine these constructs as mechanisms explaining criminal involvement among individuals with BPD. This study examined positive/negative emotion dysregulation and internalized shame as mechanisms of the relationship between BPD and criminal involvement. Adults (N = 93) currently incarcerated in jail who are identified as having a current or prior mental health concern were invited to participate in the study. Measures include the addiction severity index (ASI) examining criminal involvement, the original and positive versions of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale (DERS; DERS-P), and the internalized shame scale (ISS). At the bivariate level, BPD symptoms were significantly correlated with negative emotion dysregulation (total score) and several subscales (clarity, goals, impulse, strategies), as well as internalized shame and criminal involvement. Negative emotion dysregulation and internalized shame were unrelated to criminal involvement, and there was no evidence of mediation through these constructs. These bivariate results are consistent with other literature, but future research is needed to examine relevant variables that could explicate the relationship between BPD symptoms and criminal involvement.

This thesis focuses on the topic self-acceptance in order to describe the contemporary place of this phenomenon in the context of well-being. The aim is to extent the knowledge of accepting relationship to the self thanks to comparison with other, relevant concepts. The theoretical part of this work introduces the actual conception of positive psychology, the latest aproaches to well- being and is also about the topic self-system. There are also describe concepts as self-acceptance, self-copassion, internalized shame a dispositional optimism. In the empirical part, there is examined the research hypotheses about existence the relationships between unconditional self- acceptance and other concepts, which are measured by czech translations of these questionnaire methods: Unconditional Self-Acceptance Questionnaire (USAQ), Self-Compassion Scale (SCS-CZ), Internalized Shame Scale (ISS) a Life Orientation Test - Revised (LOT-R). It was conducted on the sample of 215 respondents od czech population. Results show the statistically significant relationship between unconditional self-acceptance and all the other concepts. There was further found high correlation between self-compassion and internalized shame and middle correlation between self-compassion and dispositional optimism. Also statistically...