religions Article Self-Compassion and Social Connectedness as Predictors of “Peace and Meaning” during Spain’s Initial COVID-19 Lockdown Jesús Saiz 1,2, * , Berta Ausín 2,3 , Clara González-Sanguino 2,3 , Miguel Ángel Castellanos 2,4 , María Salazar 1,2 , Carolina Marin 2,3 ,Aída López-Gómez 2 , Carolina Ugidos 2 and Manuel Muñoz 2,3   Citation: Saiz, Jesús, Berta Ausín, Clara González-Sanguino, Miguel Ángel Castellanos, María Salazar, Carolina Marin, Aída López-Gómez, Carolina Ugidos, and Manuel Muñoz. 2021. Self-Compassion and Social Connectedness as Predictors of “Peace and Meaning” during Spain’s Initial COVID-19 Lockdown. Religions 12: 683. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel12090683 Academic Editor: Christian Zwingmann Received: 21 July 2021 Accepted: 20 August 2021 Published: 26 August 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Social Work Differential Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain; msalaz05@ucm.es 2 Chair Against Stigma Grupo 5, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain; bertaausin@psi.ucm.es (B.A.); clagon06@ucm.es (C.G.-S.); mcastellanos@psi.ucm.es (M.Á.C.); c.marin@psi.ucm.es (C.M.); aidalopezgomez@ucm.es (A.L.-G.); cugidos@ucm.es (C.U.); mmunozlo@ucm.es (M.M.) 3 Department of Clinical Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain 4 Department of Psychobiology and Methodology in Behavioral Sciences, School of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain * Correspondence: jesus.saiz@psi.ucm.es Abstract: The COVID-19 lockdown has had a massive psychological impact on mental health in the general population, with increases in anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Spiritual well-being, specifically peace and meaning, has already been identified as one of the main protective factors for these disorders in the COVID-19 context. The aim of the present study is to identify facilitating elements for peace and meaning during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain. Online surveys were used to obtain data from a sample of 3480 Spanish people. Self-compassion and social support were positively related with peace and meaning, while loneliness and perceived discrimination were negatively related. The model for peace and meaning was statistically significant, explaining 47% of the variance. The significant variables were self-kindness, family support, mindfulness, and sense of belonging having a positive association and loneliness a negative one. Keywords: COVID-19; spiritual well-being; peace and meaning; self-compassion; spirituality; so- cial support 1. Introduction In December 2019, the outbreak of what was going to be known as the COVID- 19 pandemic started in the Chinese city of Wuhan. In a few days, many people became infected, and several deaths were reported. In two months, more than 34 countries reported instances of the same virus. In order to control the disease, a state of alarm was declared in different countries, leading the population to an indefinite lockdown. Although necessary to prevent the disease from spreading, the effects of lockdown can have a major impact at a psychological level and be very long lasting (Brooks et al. 2020). Recent publications have observed the psychological impact of the COVID-19 lock- down on the general population, highlighting greater psychological distress, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depressive symptoms, greater anxiety levels, insomnia, and irritability, among others (Rossi et al. 2020; Wang et al. 2020; Song et al. 2020). These results have also been replicated in Spain (González-Sanguino et al. 2020; Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al. 2020). In addition, some other authors have indicated that this pandemic will end up producing stigmatization and discrimination towards the people infected and their environment (Brooks et al. 2020; Röhr et al. 2020). Some underlying mechanisms of the impact on mental health have already been observed in relation to COVID-19 confinement. Li et al. (2020) observed that individuals Religions 2021, 12, 683. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12090683 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions