Kirk Warren Brown wants to teach you not to think.
In a Jan. 11 campus talk on “The Mindful Regulation of Emotion,” the professor from Virginia Commonwealth University explained how using mindfulness, or the state of being completely aware, can help people manage their emotions, which in turn can help people fare better in nearly all situations.
“Emotion is one of the key aspects of human function, and we’re learning now that it cannot be separated from any other aspect of psychological functions, such as ways of behaving or interacting with people,” Brown said. “Emotions play a role in how we make decisions, how we ready behavioral responses and how we remember things. It’s so fundamental to our experience that many talk about emotions as though it’s background music that’s always playing.”
But emotions also are a double-edged sword that can either help or hurt daily interactions, he said. That’s where mindfulness comes in. It’s the practice of being completely aware of yourself and your thoughts in a nonjudgmental way. His research has shown that mindfulness can help people regulate their emotions and communicate better with their partners.
“A lot of times our emotions are immediately translated into thoughts about those emotions—memories, fears and anxieties,” Brown said. “Simply observe all the processes going on inside you. ”
Achieving mindfulness is not complicated. Participants in studies can practice mindfulness simply by observing their thoughts and emotion but not judging them.
Doing that—observing without judgment—takes your finger off the emotional trigger, Brown said. Participants in his studies found that they fought less, used fewer negative words and felt more supportive and supported after practicing mindfulness before a conflict with a romantic partner.
By the same token, those who were asked to remember a sad time in their lives reported recovering from that emotional state much faster after using mindfulness when compared to trying to distract themselves from their feelings. It can even help in romantic relationships, according to Brown.
“A lot of emotions can accrue when we aren’t able to regulate our emotions during a conflict with our partners, ” he said. “Being an active listener is very important for communication in relationships. Also what was found was that the opposite of that—stonewalling—was conducive to the dissolution of relationships. And mindfulness, or being aware of your feelings, can lead to a felt sense of closeness with other people.
“No matter if it was the male or female member of the relationship, what we saw was that if they were more mindful before and during a conflict, they came out of the conflict with a lot less anxiety,” he added. “And that was really explained by the fact that they usually went into the conflict with less anxiety. We found the same thing for feelings of hostility.”
The reasons why mindfulness is so effective are somewhat elusive, Brown said. Tests have shown that it can decrease activity in the amgydala, the part of the brain that processes memory and emotional reactions. That may explain why people tend to fight less savagely after experiencing mindfulness, he said.
