Using meditation in a control vs. acceptance context: A preliminary evaluation of relations with anxiety, depression, and indices of well-being.

Background: AND OBJECTIVES Meditation practices have been marketed broadly to ameliorate human suffering. As such, individuals may seek out and use meditation to control or manage unpleasant thoughts and emotions. Emotion and thought control research suggest that meditation used in this way may potentiate unpleasant private experiences and contribute to negative outcomes. We aimed to evaluate the function or purpose guiding meditation and its relations with anxiety, depression, and other indices of well-being.

Design: AND METHODS In a cross-sectional design, undergraduate meditators (N = 98) reported intentions guiding their meditation practice (i.e., experiential/emotional control or acceptance/openness) and completed an assessment battery.

Results: Most participants (58.2%) indicated using meditation to manage, control, or avoid difficult experiences. Participants using meditation with control-based intentions reported greater worry, anxiety, depression, negative affect, and lower mindfulness relative to their acceptance-guided counterparts. After controlling for level of anxiety, viewing anxiety as a problem increased the likelihood of using meditation with control-based intentions. Similar relations were observed between viewing stress as a problem and the likelihood of using meditation for experiential control.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that (a) how people meditate is significantly related to psychological distress and (b) highlight the importance of evaluating intentions guiding meditative practices, particularly in individuals struggling with unpleasant emotional or psychological experiences.