self-criticism

The Ig Nobel Prize, a spoof on Nobel Prize, has long performed a valuable service to science.It honours achievements that make people laugh and then think [1].Global Health, after several decades of earnest endeavour, would seem ready for similar recognition.I therefore propose, with all due humility, the establishment of an Ig Nobel Prize for Global Health.There is, of course, no intention to mock Global Health, which is too noble, and the inequalities it seeks to address too consequential.But, like most human enterprises, Global Health has acquired its own vocabulary, rituals, paradoxes and unintended ironies.The proposed Ig Nobel Prize for Global Health would therefore recognise such phenomena for their ability to make us laugh first, think second, and perhaps recognise a little of ourselves in the process.Five examples readily come to mind.

Background Helping professionals face elevated risks of compassion fatigue and burnout, yet the daily processes through which emotional transformation occurs during therapeutic interventions remain poorly understood. This study examined how participants’ daily reflections shifted across the Emotion-Focused Training for Helping Professions (EFT-HP), analyzed through three complementary theoretical frameworks: Emotion-Focused Therapy's inner dialogue model (self-criticism, self-compassion, self-protection), Compassion-Focused Therapy's three-systems framework (threat, drive, soothing), and Ekman's basic emotion theory (primary emotions). Method Two hundred twenty-five helping professionals (88.0% female; M age = 38.7 years) from healthcare, social work, psychology, and education began the 14-day online EFT-HP intervention. Primary analyses focused on the 146 participants who completed at least 9 of the 14 days (completers), whose daily written reflections yielded 7,307 coded reflection units. Reflections were analyzed with directed content analysis and frequency quantification, applying non-exclusive, AI-assisted coding within three theoretical frameworks—EFT inner-dialogue categories, CFT emotion-regulation systems, and Ekman's discrete emotions—with a verbatim textual evidence excerpt retained for every assigned code. Results Across the intervention, participants’ reflections shifted from threat- and self-criticism-related content toward soothing and self-compassion. Within the EFT inner-dialogue framework, Self-Compassion was the most frequent category (17.9% of units) and was sustained throughout (Day-13 peak 30.8%), while Self-Criticism fell from 14.3% on Day 1 to 3.9% on Day 14 (73% relative decrease) and Self-Protection peaked on Day 6 (11.3%). Within the CFT emotion-regulation framework, the soothing system was the most frequently coded system overall (31.8% of units), followed by drive (20.4%); over the 14 days the threat system declined from 35.4% on Day 1 to 7.0% on Day 14 (80% relative decrease). Within Ekman's discrete-emotion framework, specific emotions were named less frequently: Fear declined from 2.7% to 0.8%, Anger peaked on Day 6 (15.0%), Joy rose to a Day-13 peak (14.8%), and Love was comparatively prominent (11.9% overall, Day-5 peak). Conclusions Across the 14-day intervention, participants’ daily reflections showed substantial shifts in emotional content, characterized by marked self-criticism and threat reduction alongside sustained self-compassion and soothing activation. Triangulated findings across three analytical frameworks: EFT inner dialogue, CFT emotion systems, and Ekman's primary emotions, are consistent with the emotional-transformation processes proposed by EFT-HP and with findings from previous controlled trials. Because the three frameworks were applied to the same reflection data, their convergence reflects analytic (theoretical) triangulation rather than independent confirmation.