Can Mindfulness Change How We Interpret Emotional Situations?
Unravel the profound connection between mindfulness and our emotional responses. Explore how a mindful approach might alter our perception of emotionally charged situations, offering a fresh perspective on managing stress, anxiety, and other intense feelings.
When we’re facing uncertainty, mindfulness skills may help us to interpret situations as more positive than negative
One of the ways that researchers believe we can achieve this change is through mindfulness practice.
- Throughout the day, our brain must interpret the meaning of many kinds of emotional, physical, and social stimuli
- Research in the field of psychology has found that people tend to have a default negative reaction to these cues
- Individuals who have a negative valence bias are at a greater risk of developing symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders
- It may be possible for us to reduce our tendency toward a negative bias, and shift to a more positive interpretation of uncertainty
Misty Pratt
Misty Pratt has been a health researcher for over 10 years and works as a Research Coordinator with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario
A Look at the Mindfulness Literature
The number of articles published on the effects of mindfulness has grown exponentially in recent decades and has revealed the significant benefits that mindfulness-based interventions can have for our ability to feel and express our emotions.
- However, there are some limitations with this data
- Studies have mainly focused on short-term outcomes of the MBSR program and have not assessed the long-term impacts beyond the end of the intervention
- Researchers rely on self-report measures, which could mean that participants alter their responses based on how they think the researchers want them to answer
- Harp recently published a study that addresses these two limitations in the mindfulness literature
Mindfulness May Change How We Interpret Emotional Situations
Over the eight-week period, and even after the class ends, there’s this shift toward a more positive bias
- And the shift was more apparent in the participants’ assessment of the surprised faces, rather than the consistent responses the participants gave for the happy or angry faces
- Harp’s study compared these participants to two inactive control groups, who also did the facial tests but were not participating in an MBSR program
- What they found was that participants’ bias in the control samples didn’t change over time, which further confirms that the effects they observed in the mindfulness training.
- If mindfulness helps us to respond to both our internal and external world with more positivity, it is likely to have a long-term impact on the way we approach challenging situations