Using meditation in a control vs. acceptance context: A preliminary evaluation of relations with anxiety, depression, and indices of well‐being

Abstract

Background and Objectives Meditation practices have been marketed broadly to ameliorate human suffering. As such, individuals may seek out and use meditation to control or manage unpleasant thoughts and emotions. Emotion and thought control research suggest that meditation used in this way may potentiate unpleasant private experiences and contribute to negative outcomes. We aimed to evaluate the function or purpose guiding meditation and its relations with anxiety, depression, and other indices of well‐being. Design and Methods In a cross‐sectional design, undergraduate meditators (N = 98) reported intentions guiding their meditation practice (i.e., experiential/emotional control or acceptance/openness) and completed an assessment battery. Results Most participants (58.2%) indicated using meditation to manage, control, or avoid difficult experiences. Participants using meditation with control‐based intentions reported greater worry, anxiety, depression, negative affect, and lower mindfulness relative to their acceptance‐guided counterparts. After controlling for level of anxiety, viewing anxiety as a problem increased the likelihood of using meditation with control‐based intentions. Similar relations were observed between viewing stress as a problem and the likelihood of using meditation for experiential control. Conclusions Findings suggest that (a) how people meditate is significantly related to psychological distress and (b) highlight the importance of evaluating intentions guiding meditative practices, particularly in individuals struggling with unpleasant emotional or psychological experiences.

State and Trait Emotion Regulation Diversity in Social Anxiety

“…This interpretation raises an interesting possibility that individuals with higher social anxiety may draw on approach-oriented strategies and use them to minimize contact with negative emotions as quickly as possible (e.g., similar to using worry to avoid intense negative emotion; Borkovec et al, 2004). This would fit well with recent work by Tifft and colleagues (2022), who found that more than half of their participants engaged in meditation with control/avoidance-based (vs. acceptance-based) intentions and that they experienced greater worry, anxiety, and negative affect compared with those who engaged in meditation with acceptance-based intentions. Additionally, in our sample, including average state negative affect as a simultaneous predictor made within-avoidance state-level ER diversity no longer significant, suggesting that participants’ negative affect levels at least partly motivated their choice of (avoidance-oriented) ER strategies.…”

“…Although our classification approach was based on empirical support (e.g., Daros et al, 2019; McMahon & Naragon-Gainey, 2019) and the relevance of emotional avoidance to SAD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), we cannot know whether participants’ use of a given strategy did indeed lead them to be engaged with their emotion or distanced from their emotion. Given that the way strategies are classified influences the association between ER diversity and mental health constructs (Wen et al, 2021), future research may benefit from assessing participants’ ER goals and intentions (Eldesouky & Gross, 2019; Tifft et al, 2022) as well as actual approach/avoidance impact to further explore optimal ER classification systems. Efforts to improve this classification system might also benefit from testing whether the specific emotion/affect valence being regulated (e.g., anxiety vs. sadness) changes the classification.…”

Pattern Breaking: A Complex Systems Approach to Psychedelic Medicine

“…Indeed, this explains the contention that Buddhist practice (Batchelor and Smith, 2002) and third wave cognitive-behavioural therapies may be a particularly 'good fit' for psychedelic-assisted therapy (Fauvel, Strika-Bruneau and Piolino, 2021), as well as the view that a combination of psychedelic drug administration and evidence-based psychological therapy is most beneficial, if not essential for reliable positive outcomes (Weston et al 2020(Weston et al , p. 1261. Meditation practices are known for their effectiveness in cultivating compassion, acceptance and self-awareness (Tifft et al 2022;Giraldi, 2019;Hammer, 2019;Chilson, 2018). With professional guidance, meditation may be a useful supplement to the psychological integration process (Villamil et al 2019;Travis et al 2018;Craven, 1989).…”

Nature-Based Meditation, Rumination and Mental Wellbeing

“…It is also important to recognise that the way in which young people are using meditation may moderate the effects on wellbeing. For example, a recent study showed that university students who used meditation in an attempt to control or avoid emotional experience reported more depressive symptoms than students whose intention to meditate was guided by acceptance [ 111 ].…”