هنگامی که آنچه را که شما دوست ندارید، احساس می کنید: اجتناب تجربی، ذهن آگاهی و فراشناخت احساسات در تنظیم احساسات

The present study explores the role of (1) “experiential avoidance” (being non-accepting towards mental events) and (2) “mindful awareness” (being attentive in the present moment) in the prediction of well-being. These established constructs are newly complemented with (3) “meta-emotions” (emotional reactions about one’s own emotions) that allow for a meaningful differentiation of processes in experiential avoidance. Psychometric properties of the newly developed Meta-Emotion Scale (MES) are presented. Psychological well-being is strongly predicted by all three facets. Of the six MES subscales, substantial predictive power could be confirmed for “contempt/shame”, “suppression”, “tough control” and “interest”, whereas “anger” and “compassionate care”, unexpectedly, exerted little influence in our non-clinical sample. The role of meta-emotions in emotion regulation is discussed.

Emotion regulation has been conceived as processes that serve to intensify, dampen, or maintain the behavioural, cognitive, experiential, or physiological aspects of emotion depending on an individual’s goals (Gross & Thompson, 2007). In this field of research, habitual suppression of emotion has been found to be associated with a less favourable balance of negative and positive affect, less life satisfaction, self-esteem, and psychological well-being (Gross & John, 2003). Research on mindfulness offers a distinct but related perspective on emotion regulation. In this domain, the dimension spanning non-acceptance of mental events to acceptance is investigated. Experiential avoidance (EA; Hayes, Strohsahl, Wilson, et al., 2004) is defined as unwillingness to experience feelings, thoughts and sensations as well as attempts to alter them. Accumulating evidence supports its central role in psychopathology (e.g., Zvolensky, Feldner, Leen-Feldner, & Yartz, 2005). Mindfulness as its beneficial counterpart is purposefully and non-judgmentally paying attention in the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). “Being non-judging/accepting” and “awareness/attentiveness in the present moment” are central facets of mindfulness that are emphasized in a variety of measures and negatively predict psychological symptoms (e.g., Baer et al., 2006 and Brown and Ryan, 2003). The conceptual relationship between mindfulness and EA is much debated. Despite considerable overlap in underlying processes, the most salient differences in the constructs are the divergent theoretical contexts from which they are drawn (Eastern philosophy and functional contextualism, respectively; see Block-Lerner, Salters-Pedneault, and Tull (2005) for a discussion). EA and mindfulness represent constructs that influence the experience of emotions. The central processes are yet to be nailed down (Dimidjian & Linehan, 2003). Most studies on mindfulness have focused solely on the effectiveness of interventions, but it is not clear why people avoid thoughts and emotions in the first place. 1.1. “Meta-emotion”: emotion as regulation of emotion We argue that the investigation of emotional reactions about one’s emotions, i.e., “meta-emotions” (Gottman, Katz, and Hooven (1997) coined the term to describe parental emotions on emotional displays of their child), illuminates processes in (non-)acceptance of emotions. Meta-emotions can be conceived as a subclass of “secondary emotions” (Greenberg, 2002) which is a temporal concept (a secondary emotion like anxiety follows a primary emotion like anger in time) but also implies that primary emotions can be the “object” of secondary emotions (i.e., anxiety about the angry self). Thus, emotions like anxiety, anger, or compassion become meta-emotions if their object is the emotional self (the “meta”-aspect indicated henceforth with the prefix m). As emotions, meta-emotions go beyond “meta-cognitions” (Wells & Cartwright-Hatton, 2004) and might produce vicious circles and rebound effects (Wegner, 1994). Approaches investigating “meta-mood-experiences” (Mayer and Stevens, 1994 and Salovey et al., 1995), again, explore cognitions about mood (e.g., “clarity”, “attention”, “acceptability”) with the exception that “shame about one’s mood” is part of the “acceptability”-factor in Mayer and Stevens’ (1994) approach. Several examples in clinical psychology can be conceived as meta-emotional experiences (“affect phobia”, Williams, Chambless, & Ahrens, 1997; “fear of fear”, Reiss, Peterson, Gursky, & McNally, 1986); however, these are concepts confined to a single emotion (fear) within a wide array of possible emotion-about-emotion phenomena. Meta-emotions elucidate processes in EA/mindfulness in meaningful ways: first, as emotions, they embed a judgment (cognitive appraisal) that is in contrast to the definition of mindfulness by Kabat-Zinn (1990). Whereas negative meta-emotions (e.g., manger, manxiety) reflect EA and non-acceptance, positive meta-emotions (e.g., mcompassion, minterest) support acceptance of one’s emotions with possible positive effects on well-being (Neff, 2003) but still involve a valenced appraisal. Second, the quality of meta-emotions provides information on regulatory processes operating on the target emotion. For example, being angry about one’s anxiety will influence the experience of that anxiety, and this process differs from experiencing compassion about being anxious. mAnxiety about one’s emotions depicts threat and uncertainty with the accompanying action tendency (e.g., Lazarus, 1991), whereas manger involves the perception of blocked goals and the motivation to attack, etc. Perceived control in handling the target emotion is different in manxiety compared to manger; it is also different in mcompassion compared to minterest. We argue that recurrent meta-emotions reflect an important part of a person’s emotion regulation with impact on the individual’s psychological well-being (PWB). PWB is related to but distinct from “subjective well-being” that is more hedonic in character (Keyes, Shmotkin, & Ryff, 2002; see also “hedonic” and “eudaimonic” well-being; Ryan & Deci, 2001). PWB as “perception of engagement with existential challenges of life” (Keyes et al., 2002) is more readily compatible with a mindfulness/acceptance-frame where (negative) emotions are allowed/accepted. Negative meta-emotions indicate that this “engagement” does not run smoothly. Apart from manxiety, few empirical data on emotion-about-emotion phenomena are available. Whelton and Greenberg (2005) found self-contempt to be associated with depressive symptoms. Leahy (2005) reported that people who expect others to invalidate their feelings stick to a positive view of worrying (not to get hurt). If people expect validation, they should experience less guilt and shame about their emotions. On the positive side, Neff (2003) has shown positive correlations between “self-compassion”, mindfulness, and well-being. Gilbert and colleagues (2006) have investigated “self-warmth” which is conceived as interpersonal strategy that is projected onto the self. In this study, we investigated the relative contribution of the above-mentioned factors to well-being: (1) “experiential avoidance” is conceived as an important metacognitive frame for handling mental events in a judging/non-accepting way with negative impact on well-being; (2) we expected a positive contribution of “mindful awareness” as “being attentive in the present moment”; and (3) with the newly developed Meta-Emotion Scale (MES) we included emotion-about-emotion experiences in the model to further illuminate ongoing processes in emotion regulation. We expected factors to emerge that represent discrete emotional reactions about one’s emotions (interest-about-emotions, anger-about-emotions, etc.) and explain additional variance in well-being. Whereas negative meta-emotions should reveal negative correlations, the opposite was expected for positive meta-emotions.