#387 Meditation Facilitating Normal Developmental Shift to Healthier Emotion Regulation

     "The challenge is to find ways of regulating our emotions so that we retain their helpful features while limiting their destructive aspects.
     ... two commonly used emotion regulation strategies:
     Cognitive REAPPRAISAL - changing the way one thinks about a potentially emotion-eliciting situation in order to modify its emotional impact; 

     Expressive SUPPRESSION - changing the way one responds behaviorally to an emotion-eliciting event. 

     ... experimental findings show that 

1) reappraisal has a healthier profile of ... consequences (patterns of affect, social functioning, & well-being) than suppression

2) (there's) a normative shift toward an increasingly healthy emotion regulation profile during adulthood (increases in the use of reappraisal & decreases in the use of suppression)."

 

       John OP, Gross JJ. Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: personality processes, individual differences, and life span development. J Pers 2004; 72(6): 1301-33.

     Meditation is based on seeing clearly (awareness). The acceptance aspect of meditation involves letting go of prevalent avoidant tendencies such as suppression by accepting reality as it is, rather than demanding that it conform to our preferences.