Emotions

Mindfully “Get a Grip”

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Strong emotions often produce behaviors that can be damaging and are regretted later. We overreact to a perceived slight and hurt the ones we care about most. We overreact to a driving incident doing something dangerous in response. We overreact to attractive potential romantic partners, making fools of ourselves. We overreact to restrictions with rebellion. We overreact to a drop in stock prices and unnecessarily sell at a loss. The examples are almost endless.

It is obvious that we need to better control our emotions and our responses to these emotions. Mindfulness can potentially help. It has been well established that mindfulness is associated with improved emotion regulation. Mindfulness does not simply lead to less emotionality, or that mindful people experience less emotion, but rather through a present-moment awareness and acceptance of emotional experience.

Emotions are also important to our happiness. A blunting of emotionality is actually characteristic of depression. The good thing about mindfulness is that emotions aren’t blocked. They are felt and experienced. It just makes us better able to effectively work with them. This allows mindful individuals to detect emotions early on and stop them from spiraling out of control.

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study“

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1045341555489770/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040090/

Lutz and colleagues demonstrate a neural changes underlying the improved emotion regulation. They demonstrate that when dealing with negative emotions, mindful individuals have increased activity of the prefrontal regions of the brain. They also found that activity was reduced in the amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus.

The prefrontal area is associated with self-awareness and cognitive control, indicating that mindfulness increases our ability to be aware of the emotions and to exert control over them. Although mindfulness increased the activity in this area it was also found that the higher the level of mindfulness the less the activation. This seemingly paradoxical finding indicates that as people become more mindful they require less energy and effort to effectively regulate the emotion. In other words they get more efficient.

The amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus are involved in the processing of emotions. So, the reduced activity associated with mindfulness suggests that mindful individuals are less reactive to the emotion. It has been shown that mindfulness reduces the response of the sympathetic nervous system which is involved in producing the physical sensations in emotions. By holding down the emotion’s intensity both centrally and peripherally mindful people are less likely to be overwhelmed by and overreact to their emotions.

Mindfulness actually expands awareness of the emotion even though it tamps down its intensity. Mindful people are very aware of what they’re feeling. This allows the storm of emotions to take its course, feeling it completely, not suppressing or denying it. This allows the individual to effectively process it with reason and understanding and thus deal with it more effectively.

Mindfulness has also been shown to decrease rumination where we try to think our way out of the problem. Rumination is also called fixating, or obsessing and leads to repetitive thoughts such as “Why do I feel this way? What could I have done differently? I’m no good. I’m letting people down. What’s wrong with me?” These tend to amplify the emotion making it more difficult to control it. Being more attuned to the present moment can reduce this tendency making emotion less problematic.

The research findings clearly suggest that mindfulness better equips the individual to regulate their emotions. To experience them fully and process them fully, but react efficiently and effectively and then move on.

So, practice mindfulness and “get a grip” on your emotions.

CMCS

Rethink your Emotions

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Our emotions impact our lives in many ways. They provide much of the pleasure and happiness in life. They also torment us with painful, unpleasant, feelings that interfere with our well-being and happiness. Many mental illnesses involve distorted or exaggerated emotions. So a key to our happiness and our mental health is the ability to deal with emotions effectively.

It is well established that mindfulness training increases the ability to control emotions and our responses to the emotions. This is called emotion regulation. It is a very important benefit of mindfulness and it has positive effects on many life situations from dealing with stress and depression, to assisting in recovery from cancer, to improving caregiver well-being, to being a better negotiator.

Since, the mindfulness induced improvement in emotion regulation is so important, understanding it becomes extremely important. There is a need to understand exactly what mindfulness does to improve emotion regulation and what intermediaries are affected that link mindfulness with the emotions. One aspect of this question is addressed in today’s Research News Article “State Mindfulness during Meditation Predicts Enhanced Cognitive Reappraisal”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1044275768929682/?type=1&theater

The study found that mindfulness was associated with emotional reappraisal which inferred that mindfulness promotes emotion regulation by enhancing cognitive reappraisal.

Cognitive reappraisal is a strategy that involves changing the direction or magnitude of an emotional response by reinterpreting the meaning of the situation that evoked the emotion. For example if you have to give a speech and you are overwhelmed with anxiety a possible cognitive reappraisal would be to ask yourself what’s the worst thing that could happen, your voice may quake and you may forget a few words. That’s not so bad. Then you focus on the positives for example how honored you are by the opportunity to speak to this group and the impact you will have on them. Note how the reappraisal diminishes the anxiety and replaces it with pride.

After a first date a lady does not hear from the gentleman again and becomes deeply depressed. Looking at the thought process involved the lady notes that the snub reinforced her feeling of worthlessness exacerbating her depression. A reappraisal strategy is to look carefully at the date and see that they were no really compatible and continuing dating would only lead to a dead end. Seeing it this way removes it from the problems with self-worth and reinterprets it as a good thing that he didn’t call. This Flips the situation it from a negative to a positive.

Mindfulness teaches us to look carefully at an emotion and experience it fully and not run away from it. This affords the opportunity to think about it and reappraise it. Mindfulness also relaxes the sympathetic nervous system which is highly activated with strong emotions. This makes the feeling less intense and not so overwhelming that the individual can take a look at the rationally and cognitively reappraise them.

So, practice mindfulness and better manage your emotions.

CMCS

Control Emotions the Right Way with Mindfulness

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Sometimes we get carried away by our emotions. Anger is a frequent culprit. Road rage is a perfect example. But we can also get overtaken by many other emotions such as love, jealousy, fear, etc. When this happens we often engage in behaviors that are either harmful or that we deeply regret later.

How do we control these powerful emotions? Can we learn to regulate them so that they don’t overwhelm us? One strategy is to actively strive to suppress the emotion. This is difficult, requires immense self-control, and most of the time doesn’t work. In addition, repression of extreme emotions can lead to later psychological issues. It has long been thought that repression can be problematic as the emotions reemerge late often in disguised forms.

A better strategy is mindfulness. It has been demonstrated that mindfulness training leads to a decrease in emotionality and to an increase in ability to regulate and respond appropriately to these emotions. With mindfulness the emotion is experienced fully, recognized, and appreciated for what it is. Because the emotion is processed, its power to affect behavior is reduced allowing the individual to form a more appropriate response to the situation. This is the exact opposite of emotional suppression which attempts to eliminate the emotion.

In today’s Research News article “Neural Networks for Mindfulness and Emotion Suppression”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1043795708977688/?type=1&theater

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0128005

it is demonstrated that dealing with emotions with mindfulness or with emotional suppression operate through different neural pathways. Both strategies attenuated the response of the amygdala to the emotional triggers. This area has long been known to be a key neural structure for the production of emotions. It can be thought of as a final common pathway through which emotionality is produced. So, it is not surprising that both mindfulness and emotional suppression result in a decrease in Amygdala activity.

It was shown, however, that the two strategies work through different regulation pathways to affect the Amygdala. The mindful approach affects the Amygdala via connections from the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, which is an important region for emotional awareness and mindfulness, while emotional suppression uses connections with other regions including the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and an area called the Precuneus, which are involved in top-down regulatory processing and which therefore require more cognitive effort.

The neural systems involved in the two strategies make sense given what we know about mindful vs. suppressive emotion regulation. Suppression takes intentional effort and this can be seen in the activation of cognitive processing areas of the brain. Mindfulness doesn’t take such effort. It is much more laid back and effortless. The structures involved reflect this.

So, use mindfulness to help control emotions; it’s a better way and even takes less effort.

CMCS

Be Smart about Emotions

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Emotions are powerful forces in our lives. They supply the richness and texture to life experiences, producing joy, surprise, love, happiness, elation, and satisfaction. But, they can also be troubling, associated with fear, hate, stress, anxiety, and anger. We are highly motivated by these emotions and in general seek the experience of positive emotions and try to avoid the experiencing the negative ones.

We should not view emotions as a problem and that our lives would be better without them. To the contrary, eliminating or blunting emotions is itself a problem. This is termed by psychologists as flat affect. People who experience this often comment that they have lost the “juice” in life and desire to return to the emotional ups and downs that seem to supply life’s richness. So, the emotions appear to be essential for humans to lead a rich full life.

On the other hand, when emotions become too strong they can overwhelm the individual and lead to maladaptive behavior. For example thrill seeking can lead to dangerous activities. Also, many mental illnesses are characterized by extremes of emotions. These include phobias, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, etc. In addition, strong negative emotions can lead to violence and aggression.

We need to be emotional, but not too much so. We need to be able to have emotions, but not in the extremes and we need to not overreact or overly seek emotions. In other words we need to be able to be smart with our emotions and develop the ability to regulate our emotional lives. This is termed by psychologists as emotional regulation and the ability to do so is termed as emotional intelligence.

Mindfulness has been shown to increase positive emotional states and decrease negative ones. This is one of the reasons that many people practice techniques to develop mindfulness. It seems to make their live better by assisting them in dealing with emotions. It appears to increase emotional regulation and thus mindful people can be said to have higher emotional intelligence.

How this might work to improve an individual’s ability to cope with life is explored in today’s Research News article “Dispositional mindfulness and perceived stress: The role of emotional intelligence.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1039391516084774/?type=1&theater

In this article Bao, Xue, & Kong explore how mindfulness might reduce perceived stress in life. They document that mindfulness is associated with lower levels of perceived stress and can do so directly. It appears to improve the individual’s ability to cope with life and be less stressed by the events in life. It is also demonstrated that mindfulness may reduce perceived stress by improving emotional intelligence, improving the individual’s ability to regulate and use emotions to their benefit and thereby reduce perceived stress.

Hence, the well documented ability of mindfulness to lower the individual’s feelings of stress in response to life appears, at least in part, to result from its ability to improve how well the individual can regulate their emotions. In other words, it appears to make people emotionally intelligent.

So, practice mindfulness and be smarter with your emotions; letting them enhance the experience of life while blunting their destructive side.

CMCS

Dealing With Major Depression when Drugs Fail

psyjdc 52 Comments

Mindfulness training has been repeatedly demonstrated to be an effective treatment for depression. It is so effective that the in the UK it is considered the treatment of choice for depression. But Major Depression is another level entirely. Very few treatments other than drugs have been effective.

Major Depression appears to be the result of a change in the nervous system that can generally only be reached with drugs that alter the affected neurochemical systems. Once under control with drugs, other therapies are helpful in assisting the individual to adjust to the new normal and to remedy the sequellae of years of depression.

But what can be done when drugs do not work which happens quite frequently. It is suggested in today’s Research News article, “Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy vs. psycho-education for patients with major depression who did not achieve remission following antidepressant treatment”

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.shsu.edu/science/article/pii/S0165178115000736#

that Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) may be a solution. Patients with Major Depression who have not responded to drugs did significantly improve with MBCT treatment and the improvement was superior to an active control group designed to simulate many of the conditions of MBCT.

This is remarkable. A mindfulness based treatment is effective on a major mental illness, which is principally a physiologically based disease, even when drugs fail. How is this possible that MBCT can be effective when other therapies and even drugs don’t help?

One possibility is the emphasis on the present moment in mindfulness. Depression is often rooted in the past and the individual ruminates about the misery of the past. By shifting focus to the present moment, mindfulness can move the individual from being preoccupied with a troubling past to being focused on a safe and secure present. Mindfulness also stresses non-judgmental awareness of the present. There is a decreased tendency to be constantly judging what is happening and instead just accept it as what is, which is a difficulty in depression.

Another possibility is mindfulness’ ability to increase emotion regulation. That is mindfulness assists the individual in recognizing emotions as they arise and not over respond to them. It doesn’t prevent emotions. It simply allows the individual to better deal with them when they do arise. So when depression occurs the individual can recognize it, accept it, and then let it go and not respond to it. This liberates the individual to find new ways of responding to the environment and other people.

Still another possibility is that mindfulness produces a heightening of acting with awareness. The individual then is more aware of what they’re doing. For the depressed individual this can help in the recognition of how he/she is acting in response to the depression. This allows them to reprogram their responses to be more appropriate to the circumstances of the present rather than responding to the depression itself.

Finally, it is known that drugs are effective for depression by altering the brain. It is also known that mindfulness training produces alterations of the nervous system. Perhaps, they act on the brain in similar ways, producing similar changes that help to relieve depression.

Regardless, if you’re depressed, try mindfulness.

CMCS

Fascinating boredom

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“When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Boredom is abhorred by most human beings. In fact, we’d much rather be stressed than bored. Its even been proposed to be responsible for thrill seeking and even pathological gambling. While People are more prone to boredom generally do worse in a wide variety of aspects of their lives, including career, education, and autonomy. In other words, boredom has negative effects on our lives and as such is a much more important phenomenon than general acknowledged.

But, what is it? Boredom is defined as “the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.” In fact there appears to be five different types identified by Thomas Goetz, INDIFFERENT (appear relaxed, calm, and withdrawn), APATHETIC (show little arousal and a lot of aversion), CALIBRATING (thoughts wander and something that differs is desired), REACTANT (aroused and with a lot of negative emotions), and SEARCHING (negative feelings and a creeping, disagreeable restlessness).

Thus boredom would appear to be a very noxious state that is to be avoided. But, if we make it part of our contemplative practice it can actually be hugely beneficial and we can learn a great deal about ourselves and our minds.

When you’re feeling bored, look at it deeply and honestly. It is a pointer to your suffering. As we’ve previously discussed suffering results from a desire for things to be different than they are. This is exactly true for boredom. It results from us wanting things to be different. So, looking carefully at what is wrong with the present moment can be very revealing. A great sage once asked his bored student “what’s missing from this very moment?” Ask yourself this same question.

If we look deeply we will find that this very moment is rich and lacks nothing. What we will see is that boredom emanates from our minds desire for stimulation, as it appears to believe that happiness and joy are elsewhere. But looking closely we can see that they are right her, right now. In other words boredom can lead to a recognition of the wonder and happiness that is ever present.

So, be fascinated with boredom. Use it as a gateway to understanding how your mind is preventing your happiness.

CMCS