feeling isolated by one's failures. The third component of self-compassion is mindfulness, which involves holding one's present-moment experience in balanced perspective rather than exaggerating the dramatic story-line of one's suffering. At the same time, personal fable is theorized to lead to a lack of self-compassion if one's difficulties and failings are not faced and given meaning to be human. Self-compassion may also be able to mediate personal well-being. A study of 522 individuals from ages 14-24 sought to define this link between personal mental health and presence of self-compassion. The group was divided into 235 participants from ages 14 to 17 and 287 participants from ages 19 to 24. The subjects were gathered from high schools and colleges in a single city and were not compensated. Their socioeconomic backgrounds were largely middle class(Neff & McGehee's).