As humans, by nature we deal with distressing events. We experience loss - of loved ones, a job, of how things used to be. We get sick and hurt. We feel alone. We are confused about how to live a good life. The human experience is strewn with struggles, and so how we relate to these struggles can shape the experience and quality of our lives. Many of us often feel overwhelmed by distress. Others of us, afraid of becoming overwhelmed, try and hide by getting defensive or denying our experience. Though these are common reactions, they usually don’t support us in effectively processing our negative experience and moving forward to making wise decisions about what to do next and how we want to live going forward. Much psychological research investigates just this question of how to most skillfully relate to our distress.
A recent research study investigated how mindfulness impacts our ability to tolerate and deal with distress. Participants recruited from the general community were randomly split into either a mindfulness training group or a wait list control group (in which participants were only given mindfulness training after the completion of the study). Over the four weeks of the mindfulness training program, researchers found that those in the mindfulness group reported less emotional distress than those in the control group. Interestingly, there was no difference found in participants’ reports of their discomfort tolerance. This suggests that mindfulness doesn’t change the discomfort people experience around negative events, but rather it changes how distressing that discomfort is. In other words, we can be hurt and feel the pain, and mindfulness won’t change the fact that we’re having a painful experience. Mindfulness will, however, help to reduce all the narratives and judgments about how terrible the pain is, so that this negative experience is no longer so overwhelming and distressing. We can then accept the experience for what it is and move forward.
Keryn Breiterman-Loader
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