Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic had implications for athletes’ mental well-being. This mixed-methods study examined the influence of self-compassion on athletes’ coping during the pandemic through the mediator of cognitive appraisal. The prospective design involved 90 athletes completing two online surveys 1 week apart measuring self-compassion, cognitive appraisal, and coping strategies. The PROCESS macro was used for the mediation analysis. A qualitative thematic analysis was used to explore athletes’ responses to the pandemic during the second survey. Self-compassion had an indirect negative effect on avoidance-focused coping by appraising the pandemic as less of a threat (95% confidence interval [−0.20, −0.001]) and had a total effect on emotion-focused coping (95% confidence interval [0.02, 0.40]). Based on the thematic analysis, athletes described many raw emotions and a variety of coping strategies during the pandemic. Self-compassion demonstrated promising benefits to athletes who dealt with the challenging situation of the pandemic.

应对 COVID-19 大流行对运动员的心理健康产生了影响。这项混合方法的研究通过认知评估的中介作用，研究了自我同情对运动员在大流行期间应对的影响。前瞻性设计涉及 90 名运动员，他们每隔 1 周完成两项在线调查，测量自我慈悲、认知评估和应对策略。 PROCESS 宏用于中介分析。在第二次调查中，采用定性主题分析来探讨运动员对这一流行病的反应。自我同情通过将流行病评估为威胁较小，对以回避为中心的应对方式产生间接负面影响（95％置信区间[−0.20，−0.001]），并对以情绪为中心的应对方式产生总体影响（95％置信区间） [0.02，0.40]）。根据主题分析，运动员描述了大流行期间的许多原始情绪和各种应对策略。事实证明，自我同情对于应对新冠疫情这一严峻形势的运动员来说是大有裨益的。