The impact of mindfulness on emotion dysregulation and psychophysiological reactivity under emotional provocation.

Abstract

While support continues to mount for the effectiveness of mindfulness training in improving psychological functioning, researchers are only beginning to examine its mechanisms of action. The present study employed multimodal assessment of the experience and regulation of emotion to examine the effects of a brief mindfulness intervention. Seventy undergraduate students at a small southern state university were randomly assigned to listen to a 15-min recording of either a mindfulness intervention or neutral recording followed by either a positive or negative emotion induction. At the completion of the intervention mindfulness participants demonstrated greater mindfulness than the control group as indicated by greater self-reported state mindfulness, greater Left > Right frontal brain asymmetry, and greater heart rate variability. Further, participants receiving the mindfulness intervention experienced greater emotional awareness, indicated by reporting higher positive affect regardless of emotion induction and higher negative affect when experiencing a negative emotion induction. Participants who experienced a negative emotion induction after the mindfulness intervention also reported feeling more overwhelmed and unable to improve their emotional state, suggesting that brief mindfulness intervention was successful in reducing emotional avoidance, but failed to improve the ability to regulate emotion sufficiently to withstand the demands of an aversive emotional experience. These results have significant clinical implications, as they suggest that individuals may feel more dysregulated when experiencing negative stimuli and/or mood in the beginning stages of mindfulness practice.

Mechanisms of mindfulness: Rumination and self-compassion

“…to relate to higher vmHRV, however these authors did not report the relation between vmHRV and the other FFMQ subscale scores nor the total FFMQ score. Krygier et al, 2013;May et al, 2016;Nijjar et al, 2014;Shearer, Hunt, Chowdhury, & Nicol, 2016;Takahashi et al, 2005;Tang et al, 2009;Watford & Stafford, 2015), however one study (Nyklicek, Mommersteeg, Van Beugen, Ramakers, & Van Boxtel, 2013) did not find an effect of mindfulness training on vmHRV. As mindfulness training has been shown to increase also selfcompassion levels (Kuyken et al, 2010), however, these findings cannot necessarily be interpreted as to signify that mindfulness in itself relates to higher vmHRV.…”

“…The applied vmHRV measure was HF. HF is the most commonly used in previous research examining associations between self-compassion, mindfulness and vmHRV (Azam et al, 2015;Delgado-Pastor et al, 2013;Krygier et al, 2013;May et al, 2016;Nijjar et al, 2014;Nyklicek et al, 2013;Takahashi et al, 2005;Tang et al, 2009;Watford & Stafford, 2015) and is considered a valid measure of vmHRV…”

Psychological Well-being and Coping: the Predictive Value of Adult Attachment, Dispositional Mindfulness, and Emotion Regulation

“…However, we are still unsure of how these constructs are specifically related to one another. Future research may wish to continue utilizing experimental design and behavioral indicators to successfully compliment the current self-report measures of mindfulness to further examine the relationships between constructs (see Arch and Craske 2006;Keng et al 2017;Watford and Stafford 2015). A recent meta-analysis of mindfulness and emotion regulation showcases methodological developments in this research field, and confirms the relationship between these constructs through experimental manipulation (Leyland et al 2018).…”

Is Dispositional Self-Compassion Associated With Psychophysiological Flexibility Beyond Mindfulness? An Exploratory Pilot Study

“…Likewise, Kadziolka et al (2016) found the FFMQ-subscales of "Observe" and "Acting with Awareness" to relate to a higher vmHRV after a stress induction task. Interestingly, in contrast to measuring dispositional mindfulness, a more consistent relationship is found between mindfulness training and increased levels of vmHRV (e.g., Takahashi et al, 2005;Ditto et al, 2006;Tang et al, 2009;Joo et al, 2010;Delgado-Pastor et al, 2013;Krygier et al, 2013;Nijjar et al, 2014;Azam et al, 2015;Watford and Stafford, 2015;May et al, 2016;Shearer et al, 2016), although one study did not find such an effect of mindfulness training on level of vmHRV (Nyklicek et al, 2013).…”

“…It showed that only self-compassion predicted better abilities in mood drop and spontaneous mood-recovery when including both mindfulness (measured with the MAAS) and self-compassion (measured with the SCS) as predictors in the same regression model. Dispositional mindfulness (e.g., Delgado-Pastor et al, 2013;Krygier et al, 2013;Nijjar et al, 2014;Watford and Stafford, 2015;May et al, 2016;Shearer et al, 2016) and dispositional selfcompassion (Rockliff et al, 2008;Kok et al, 2013;Arch et al, 2014;Matos et al, 2017;Petrocchi et al, 2017) are further also linked to psychophysiological flexibility as measured with higher vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV). However, as far as we know, no study has yet attempted to disentangle the effect of dispositional self-compassion from dispositional mindfulness on vmHRV.…”