Mindfulness Meditation-based Clinical Interventions (MMCIs) teach participants to regard their negative thoughts as passing phenomenological events that may momentarily capture attention but can then be let go of. Therefore a key principle of mindfulness meditation practice is to not react too strongly to thoughts, such as by ascribing too significant a meaning or importance to them, identifying one’s ‘self’ or ‘true reality’ with the content of one’s thoughts, or attempting to suppress negative thoughts. Consequently MMCIs seek to promote a form of awareness of negative thoughts in which qualities of acceptance, de-centering, and letting-go cultivate one’s inner capacity to reflect upon and influence one’s own cognitive experiences. This purposeful orientation toward one’s thoughts may promote affect regulation through cognitive flexibility. For example, Kabat-Zinn et al hypothesized that: ‘the insight that one is not one’s thoughts means that one has a potential range of responses to a given thought if one is able to identify it as such. This increased range of options is associated with a feeling of control... [that] is a feature of a cognitive pathway explaining’ the clinical efficacy of MMCIs for reducing anxiety and depression."
Frewen PA et al. Letting go: Mindfulness and negative automatic thinking. Cognitive Therapy and Research 2008; 32(6): 758-774.
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