The term “Mindfulness“It can be used in different meaning of meaning: on the one hand it can be understood as a mental state that emerges following a systematic practice of meditation; on the other it can be considered a variable of trait, a basic human ability or personal tendency to be and act in everyday life with greater awareness and predisposition to focus attention in the present moment and to observe the flow of thoughts, emotions and sensations, maintaining an attitude of non acceptance.
Several associations were found between Mindfulness It is better operation on different variables (including greater qualities and satisfaction of life, self -esteem, health and well -being perceived, concentration ability, couple satisfaction, empathy). There Regulation of emotions It has been proposed as a mechanism that could at least partially influence and explain the effects of mindfulness on health.
With the term emotional regulation we refer to the processes, more or less automatic or controlled, through which we modulate the emotions that we experience, when we experience them, influencing our subjective experience, the tendency to action and the level of physiological activation that derives from it: this ability is constantly requested from the interaction with the environment and influences the occurrence, the intensity, duration and expression of our emotions.
The regulation of emotions includes different faces in the face of frontaling, including stimulus control, cognitive revaluation, problem-solving, acceptance, relaxation, suppression of emotions, distraction.
The effectiveness of these strategies varies according to individual preferences and the specific situation: in general we can consider the strategies that, allowing to recognize and understand the meaning of one’s emotional experiences, use their information value and manage their experience and expression adequately, promote a good and long -term proper functioning.
Similarly to the Mindfulnessthe strategies of emotional regulation Functional would provide a better adaptation to the environment through greater awareness and cognitive and behavioral flexibility, promoting less urgency and tendency to act following an emotion, thus reducing the tendency to respond habitual, automatic, impulsive or maladatively and allowing you to orient your behavior towards a direction that is more consistent with environmental requests and personal purposes.
On the contrary, i Emotional regulation deficit They can reduce perceived well -being and be implicated in different psychological and relational difficulties. Although, as already underlined, it is sometimes difficult to define a priori whether a type of emotional regulation strategy is in itself more or less adaptive than another, the effects of the use of specific strategies have often compared: cognitive revaluation is generally associated with better psychological functioning; the suppression instead of a worst functioning.
In the context of various psychological disorders, it is frequently the use of strategies such as rumination and avoidance, minor that of cognitive revaluation and acceptance. Most of the studies take into consideration samples with people in adulthood: less numerous are those who deal with adolescent age, especially as regards the mechanisms that could submit the influence of the predisposition to the Mindfulness On psychopathology in this phase of life. Adolescence is a period that requires to adapt to important physical, biological, psychological and social changes.
There is an increase in the prevalence of some psychological disorders, with repercussions on school, social and relational functioning, and this would also be a predictor of a worst functioning in adulthood: risk behaviors can be found (including the use of dangerous sexual and driving substances and behaviors), as well as consequences on the school path, which in turn may have repercussions on self -esteem and trust in their ability to face certain tasks, evidence and difficulty. future in other areas.
In light of this it becomes important to investigate the factors that could influence the risk and maintenance of psychopathology in adolescence. As for adults, a greater predisposition to the Mindfulness It would seem to be associated with minor levels of psychopathology, as well as influencing emotional regulation, with less use of strategies such as avoidance and rumination; In turn, the emotional regulation would seem at least in part to mediate the association between predisposition to Mindfulness And psychological difficulties.
Even in adolescence, mindfulness has been found to be a resource capable of influencing quality of life, level of psychopathology and ability to face stressful events. The ability to regulate one’s emotions in adolescence seems moreover in itself a predictor of psychopathology over time.
On the basis of these and other evidence in a recent article (teenagence mindfulness and psychopathology: The Role of Emotion Regulation), the authors investigated the mechanisms that could submit to the relationship between Mindfulnessunderstood in the exception of individual difference, and psychopathology in a sample of teenagers aged 12 to 18.
The hypothesis was that teenagers with less predisposition to mindfulness would show reduced emotional regulation capabilities, in terms of a low use of cognitive revaluation (understood as a strategy that includes the examination of thoughts relating to a specific situation and the production of different interpretations or perspectives, modifying the emotional impact) and a high use of suppression (understood as a strategy of avoidance through which it is they try to inhibit the external indicators of the emotional states) and that this ability to regulate emotions would have mediated the association between levels of predisposition to mindfulness and psychopathology levels detected (depression, anxiety, stress, outsourcing symptoms and internalizing symptoms).
Among the various data that emerged, the results found that a lower disposition to MindFulness was associated with higher levels of psychopathology. The cognitive revaluation and the suppression were both associated with the psychopathology indicators in the expected direction, except for the association between suppression and externalizing symptoms.
The suppression was largely explained the association between low predisposition to Mindfulness and psychopathology As for depression, stress and above all anxiety, but not for the more general internal and outsourcing problems: this, as indicated by the authors themselves, suggests the usefulness of considering other mediation factors.
In conclusion, the predisposition to mindfulness seems to be an important protective factor during adolescence, with the ability to emotional regulation Which can be implicated among the mechanisms that undergo its beneficial effects on health: teenagers with less predisposition to mindfulness would in fact be more likely to put into practice attempts to suppress emotional experiences, a mechanism in turn associated at greater levels of psychopathology: the effort to avoid or control negative emotions can in fact have the paradoxical effect of increasing them, and this mechanism is implicated in maintaining Several disorders, including anxiety and depression.
The results that emerged suggest the importance of also using specific interventions for the evaluation of the emotional regulation strategies adopted, promoting the use of functional strategies. In addition, and above all for the teenagers who present the symptoms considered by this study, the usefulness of specific clinical interventions that can increase the predisposition to the Mindfulnessboth as they are able to influence emotional regulation skills and therefore have indirect effects on psychopathology, and for its direct effects on it.
